Statistical thermodynamics MOC

Distribution of microstates at equilibrium

Let be a discrete random variable representing the microstate of a thermodynamic system and let . Maximum entropy thermodynamics or MaxEnt thermodynamics derives all results from the general Principle of maximum entropy: The distribution of at equilibrium is that which maximizes its Shannon entropy

and that this coïncides with the thermodynamic entropy of the system. Thus determination of the distribution is reduced to an optimization problem, and thus the method of Lagrange multipliers may be used. See Ensembles for the distributions in different scenarios.

See also

• Alternative approaches to statistical thermodynamics

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