Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 160404 (2007) [4 pages]Typicality for Generalized Microcanonical EnsemblesSee Also: Publisher's Note Received 17 July 2007; published 19 October 2007; publisher error corrected 17 March 2008 For a macroscopic, isolated quantum system in an unknown pure state, the expectation value of any given observable is shown to hardly deviate from the ensemble average with extremely high probability under generic equilibrium and nonequilibrium conditions. Special care is devoted to the uncontrollable microscopic details of the system state. For a subsystem weakly coupled to a large heat bath, the canonical ensemble is recovered under much more general and realistic assumptions than those implicit in the usual microcanonical description of the composite system at equilibrium. © 2007 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.160404
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.160404
PACS:
05.30.−d, 03.65.−w
See AlsoComment: Dorje C. Brody, Comment on “Typicality for Generalized Microcanonical Ensembles”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 148901 (2008). Publisher's Note: Peter Reimann, Publisher’s Note: Typicality for Generalized Microcanonical Ensembles [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 160404 (2007)], Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 119901 (2008). Reply: Peter Reimann, Reimann replies:, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 148902 (2008). |
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