Violation of the virial theorem and generalized equipartition theorem for logarithmic oscillators serving as a thermostat

Kai Chen, Dahai He, Hong Zhao

Published 2016-12-20Version 1

A logarithmic oscillator has been proposed recently to serve as a thermostat recently since it has a peculiar property of infinite heat capacity according to the virial theorem. In order to examine its feasibility by numerical simulations, a modified logarithmic potential has been applied in previous studies to eliminate the singularity at origin. The role played by the modification has been elucidated in the present study. We argue that the virial theorem is practically violated for the modified log-oscillator illustrated by a linear dependence of kinetic temperature on energy. Furthermore, as far as a thermalized log-oscillator is concerned, the generalized equipartition theorem with respect to the position coordinate is broken if the temperature is higher than a critical temperature. Finally, we show that log-oscillators fail to serve as thermostats for its incapability of maintaining a nonequilibrium steady state even though their energy is appropriately assigned.