Recent content by mirko1

Hysteresis is an interesting suggestion too, so I’ll definitely look into it. Thanks again for pointing me in that direction!

Maybe I was approaching the problem from the wrong side by focusing on thermodynamics. What I’m really interested in is whether there can be useful intermediate descriptions between the full microstate and a macroscopic description, and under what conditions those reduced descriptions remain...

Thanks, I really appreciate your answer! I think what I’m really interested in is the predictive side of this. If two microscopic states are indistinguishable under a given coarse-grained description, but later produce experimentally distinguishable macroscopic behaviour, then that description...

Thank you for the answers! And maybe a glass transition example is closer to what I was trying to describe. Imagine two glass samples at exactly the same T, P and density. From the usual thermodynamic variables, they look identical. However, suppose they were prepared differently: one was...

I think I explained my point badly. I’m not saying that we should replace thermodynamics with a microscopic description whenever we can use one. What I’m wondering is whether the macroscopic variables we use are always enough to predict how the system will evolve. In other words, could two...

I agree that in ordinary thermodynamic situations, most microscopic information can be safely discarded. What I’m wondering is whether there could be situations where the opposite becomes important: where we normally go from the microscopic description to the macroscopic one, but under extreme...

Yes I have, I recently started looking into quantum thermodynamics, especially the connection between quantum information, correlation and coarse-graining. That’s what actually led me to this question. I’m trying to understand if some information contained in the full quantum state could be...

I’m a chemistry student, I’ve been thinking about the connection between quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. In thermodynamics we describe a system through macroscopic quantities such as T, P, Energy… Quantum mechanics on the other hand, gives us more detailed description on the microscopic...