title: Nonanalytic microscopic phase transitions and temperature oscillations in the microcanonical ensemble: an exactly solvable one-dimensional model for evaporation.
abstract: We calculate exactly both the microcanonical and canonical thermodynamic functions (TDFs) for a one-dimensional model system with piecewise constant Lennard-Jones type pair interactions. In the case of an isolated N-particle system, the microcanonical TDFs exhibit (N - 1) singular (nonanalytic) microscopic phase transitions of the formal order N/2, separating N energetically different evaporation (dissociation) states. In a suitably designed evaporation experiment, these types of phase transitions should manifest themselves in the form of pressure and temperature oscillations, indicating cooling by evaporation. In the presence of a heat bath (thermostat), such oscillations are absent, but the canonical heat capacity shows a characteristic peak, indicating the temperature-induced dissociation of the one-dimensional chain. The distribution of complex zeros of the canonical partition may be used to identify different degrees of dissociation in the canonical ensemble.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Physics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Newton-Strasse 15, D-12489 Berlin, Germany. hilbert@mpa-garching.mpg.de
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hilbert
authors.forename: Jörn
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dunkel