Isothermal-isobaric ensemble

The isothermal-isobaric ensemble has the following variables:

• $N$ is the number of particles
• $p$ is the pressure
• $T$ is the temperature

The classical partition function, for a one-component atomic system in 3-dimensional space, is given by

$Q_{NpT}={\frac {\beta p}{\Lambda ^{3N}N!}}\int _{0}^{\infty }dVV^{N}\exp \left[-\beta pV\right]\int d(R^{*})^{3N}\exp \left[-\beta U\left(V,(R^{*})^{3N}\right)\right]$

where

• $\left.V\right.$ is the Volume:

• $\beta :={\frac {1}{k_{B}T}}$, where $k_{B}$ is the Boltzmann constant

• $\left.\Lambda \right.$ is the de Broglie thermal wavelength

• $\left(R^{*}\right)^{3N}$ represent the reduced position coordinates of the particles; i.e. $\int d(R^{*})^{3N}=1$

• $\left.U\right.$ is the potential energy, which is a function of the coordinates (or of the volume and the reduced coordinates)

Related reading

• Daan Frenkel and Berend Smit "Understanding Molecular Simulation: From Algorithms to Applications", Second Edition (2002) ISBN 0-12-267351-4