[Physics] Partition Function as characteristic function of energy

partition functionstatistical mechanics

I'm going through a book on statistical mechanics and there it says that the partition function
$$Z = \sum_{\mu_S} e^{-\beta H(\mu_S)}$$
where $\mu_S$ denotes a microstate of the system and $H(\mu_S)$ the Hamiltonian, is proportional to the characteristic function $\hat p(\beta)$ of the energy probability distribution function. This allows us to make then the next step and conclude that
$\ln Z$ is the cumulant generating function with the nice result that
$$\langle H \rangle = -\frac{\partial \ln Z}{\partial \beta}$$
and
$$\langle H – \langle H \rangle \rangle^2 = \frac{\partial^2 \ln Z}{\partial \beta^2}$$
but I fail to see why $Z$ is proportional to characteristic function. Also, if I imagine that $Z$ is the characteristic function to the energy, then wouldn't I have to evaluate the derivative at $\beta = 0$?

I know that the two formulas above can also be obtained by explicitly doing the calculation using the definition of $Z$ in the first line, but I'd like to generalize this result to the momenta and cumulants of all orders.

Best Answer

They are not actually proportional, I think it's meant something else. The partition function $Z(\beta)$ is the Laplace Transform (LT) of the density $g(E)$ of states of energy $E$, i.e. \begin{equation} Z(\beta)=\int_{0}^{\infty}e^{-\beta E}g(E)dE. \end{equation} The partition function $Z$ plays the role of a characteristic function and $g(E)$ the role of probability density function (p.d.f.), that is the p.d.f. is $p(E)=\frac{g(E)}{\int g(E)dE}$.

To be more precise, the partition function $Z$ is a "probability-generating function" like it is the characteristic function ($\varphi_{X}:=\langle e^{itX} \rangle$ and in this case is the fourier transform of the p.d.f.), the moment-generating function $(M_{X}(t):=\langle e^{tX} \rangle)$ and the cumulant-generating function.

The Probability-generating function is defined as \begin{equation*} G(s)=\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}p_{n}s^{n} \end{equation*} where $p_{n}$ is the probability mass and the series is absolutely convergent for $|s|\leq1$. Then \begin{equation*} Z(\beta)=G(e^{-\beta})=\sum_{E}^{\infty}p_{E}e^{-\beta E}. \end{equation*} Note that this can be generalized to \begin{equation} Z_{H}(\beta)=\int e^{-\beta H(\vec{X})}d\mu(\vec{X}), \end{equation} where the integral is over the space where $\vec{X}$ belongs to (usually phase-space) and $d\mu(\vec{X})$ is a measure on this space (usually $d\mu(\vec{X})=g(\vec{X})d\vec{X}$). It's common to use the assumption that the density is uniform (microcanonical ensemble).

This is a nice question since these probability-generating functions appear in many different areas of physics such statistical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum field theory and quantum mechanics. All with different names but the same mathematical structure which simplifies calculations of moments and correlations.

References: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_function_(mathematics)

  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability-generating_function
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