Logarithmic oscillators: ideal Hamiltonian thermostats

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Jun 22;108(25):250601. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.250601. Epub 2012 Jun 18.

Abstract

A logarithmic oscillator (in short, log-oscillator) behaves like an ideal thermostat because of its infinite heat capacity: When it weakly couples to another system, time averages of the system observables agree with ensemble averages from a Gibbs distribution with a temperature T that is given by the strength of the logarithmic potential. The resulting equations of motion are Hamiltonian and may be implemented not only in a computer but also with real-world experiments, e.g., with cold atoms.