Superstatistics and temperature fluctuations

Abstract

Superstatistics [C. Beck and E.G.D. Cohen, Physica A 322, 267 (2003)] is a formalism aimed at describing statistical properties of a generic extensive quantity E in complex out-of-equilibrium systems in terms of a superposition of equilibrium canonical distributions weighted by a function P(beta) of the intensive thermodynamic quantity beta conjugate to E. It is commonly assumed that P(beta) is determined by the spatiotemporal dynamics of the system under consideration. In this work we show by examples that, in some cases fulfilling all the conditions for the superstatistics formalism to be applicable, P(beta) is actually affected also by the way the measurement of E is performed, and thus is not an intrinsic property of the system.