An alternative to the conventional micro-canonical ensemble

Understand

Usual approach to the foundations of quantum statistical physics is based on conventional micro-canonical ensemble as a starting point for deriving Boltzmann-Gibbs (BG) equilibrium.

• It leaves, however, a number of conceptual and practical questions unanswered.
• Here we discuss these questions, thereby motivating the study of a natural alternative known as Quantum Micro-Canonical (QMC) ensemble.
• We present a detailed numerical study of the properties of the QMC ensemble for finite quantum systems revealing a good agreement with the existing analytical results for large quantum systems.