2. Temperature

2.1 Statistical definition

We saw that molecular dynamics would provide the mechanical and microscopic quantities of the velocities and positions of all the atoms in the system under consideration, these quantities still being referred to as the phase set. It then seems obvious to use theoretical developments in statistical mechanics to extract macroscopic quantities from atomic quantities.

The statistical definition of temperature is not new, having been established by Maxwell over a century ago in his kinetic theory of gases . The approach consists in using the velocity distribution...