A Dynamical Approach to Temperature

Abstract

We present a new dynamical approach for measuring the temperature of a Hamiltonian dynamical system in the micro canonical ensemble of thermodynamics. We show that under the hypothesis of ergodicity the temperature can be computed as a time-average of the functional, div(grad H/|grad H|^2), on the energy-surface. Our method not only yields an efficient computational approach for determining the temperature it also provides an intrinsic link between dynamical systems theory and the statistical mechanics of Hamiltonian systems.