Quantum Statistical Thermodynamics of Two-Level Systems

Abstract

We study four distinct families of Gibbs canonical distributions defined on the standard complex, quaternionic, real and classical (nonquantum) two-level systems. The structure function or density of states for any two-level system is a simple power (1, 3, 0 or -1) of the length of its polarization vector, while the magnitude of the energy of the system, in all four cases, is the negative of the logarithm of the determinant of the corresponding two-dimensional density matrix. Functional relationships (proportional to ratios of gamma functions) are found between the average polarizations with respect to the Gibbs distributions and the effective polarization temperature parameters. In the standard complex case, this yields an interesting alternative, meeting certain probabilistic requirements recently set forth by Lavenda, to the more conventional (hyperbolic tangent) Brillouin function of paramagnetism (which, Lavenda argues, fails to meet such specifications).