Saturday 31 December 2016

statistical mechanics - Why is the canonical partition function the Laplace transform of the microcanonical partition function?


This web page says that the microcanonical partition function $$ \Omega(E) = \int \delta(H(x)-E) \,\mathrm{d}x $$ and the canonical partition function $$ Z(\beta) = \int e^{-\beta H(x)}\,\mathrm{d}x $$ are related by the fact that $Z$ is the Laplace transform of $\Omega$. I can see mathematically that this is true, but why are they related this way? Why can we intrepret the integrand in $Z$ as a probability, and what allows us to identify $\beta = \frac{1}{kT}$?





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