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In physics, a partition function describes the statistical properties of a system in thermodynamic equilibrium. [ citation needed ] Partition functions are functions of the thermodynamic state variables , such as the temperature and volume .
In quantum field theory, partition functions are generating functionals for correlation functions, making them key objects of study in the path integral formalism. They are the imaginary time versions of statistical mechanics partition functions , giving rise to a close connection between these two areas of physics.
The partition function or configuration integral, as used in probability theory, information theory and dynamical systems, is a generalization of the definition of a partition function in statistical mechanics. It is a special case of a normalizing constant in probability theory, for the Boltzmann distribution.
In statistical physics textbooks for interacting particle systems the three ensembles are assumed to be thermodynamically equivalent: the fluctuations of macroscopic quantities around their average value become small and, as the number of particles tends to infinity, they tend to vanish. In the latter limit, called the thermodynamic limit, the ...
In statistical mechanics, the translational partition function, is that part of the partition function resulting from the movement (translation) of the center of mass. For a single atom or molecule in a low pressure gas, neglecting the interactions of molecules , the canonical ensemble q T {\displaystyle q_{T}} can be approximated by: [ 1 ]
Rotational energies are quantized. For a diatomic molecule like CO or HCl, or a linear polyatomic molecule like OCS in its ground vibrational state, the allowed rotational energies in the rigid rotor approximation are = = (+) = (+). J is the quantum number for total rotational angular momentum and takes all integer values starting at zero, i.e., =,,, …, = is the rotational constant, and is ...
The denominator in equation 1 is a normalizing factor so that the ratios : add up to unity — in other words it is a kind of partition function (for the single-particle system, not the usual partition function of the entire system).
The vibrational partition function [1] traditionally refers to the component of the canonical partition function resulting from the vibrational degrees of freedom of a system. The vibrational partition function is only well-defined in model systems where the vibrational motion is relatively uncoupled with the system's other degrees of freedom.