A Closer Look on the Influence of Constraints Upon the Optimization of the Nonadditive Entropic Functional $S_{q}$

Abstract

The thermal-equilibrium canonical distribution is currently obtained by maximizing the Boltzmann-Gibbs-von Neumann-Shannon entropy $S_{BG}(p)=k\sum^{W}_{i=1}p_{i}\ln 1/p_{i}$ constrained to $\sum^{W}_{i=1}p_{i}=1$ and $\sum^{W}_{i=1}p_{i}\,e_{i}=U$, $e_{1}\leq\ldots\leq e_{W}$ being the energies of the $W$ possible states and $U\in[e_{1},e_{W}]$ their mean value. We revisit a generalized version of this optimization problem grounded in the nonadditive entropy $S_{q}(p)=k\,(\sum^{W}_{i=1}p_{i}^{q}-1)/(1-q)$ (frequently, though not necessarily, $q\in(0,1)$; $S_1=S_{BG}$), and the constraint $\sum^{W}_{i=1} p_{i}^{q^{\prime}}e_{i} / \sum^{W}_{i=1}p_{i}^{q^{\prime}}=U$, $q^{\prime}>0$. Sufficient conditions for existence, strict positivity, and uniqueness of solutions are derived, along with a theorem that enables their closed-form calculation. We apply these results to deepen the understanding of the two standard cases in the literature ($q^{\prime}=1$ and $q^{\prime}=q$), as well as of a new one ($q^{\prime}=2-q$). We prove that these standard cases are the only ones yielding optimizing probability distributions of $q$-exponential form. Furthermore, we define an effective temperature $T_{q,q^{\prime}}$ through a Clausius-like relation $1/T_{q,q^{\prime}}=\partial S_{q} / \partial U$ and derive a Helmholtz-like energy $F_{q,q^{\prime}}=U-T_{q,q^{\prime}}S_{q}$, with the former grounding the validity of the $0^{th}$ Principle of Thermodynamics within this generalized statistical mechanics. Finally, we show that the case with a linear constraint (i.e., $q^{\prime}=1$) with $q\in(0,1)$ (i) preserves the Third Law of Thermodynamics; (ii) can be used to model classical many-body Hamiltonian systems with arbitrarily-ranged interactions; and (iii) resembles features of low-dimensional nonlinear dynamical systems at the edge of chaos.