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Caltech

Information, Geometry, and Physics Seminar

Wednesday, April 12, 2023
2:00pm to 3:30pm
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Linde Hall 310
On The Origins of the Boltzmann Distribution, or Support Preserving Endomorphisms of Convolution Semigroups, joint with Fedor Sandomirskiy
Omer Tamuz, Economics & Mathematics, Caltech,

The Boltzmann distribution is used in statistical mechanics to describe the distribution of states in systems with a given temperature. We give a novel characterization of this distribution as the unique one satisfying independence for uncoupled systems. The theorem boils down to a statement about symmetries of the convolution semigroup of finitely supported probability measures on the integers.

For more information, please contact Mathematics Department by phone at 626-395-4335 or by email at [email protected].