Rigid rotators and diatomic molecules via Tsallis statistics

TL;DR

This paper derives exact and approximate formulas for the specific heat of rigid rotators and diatomic gases within Tsallis nonextensive statistics, revealing a mixing of degrees of freedom.

Contribution

It provides the first analytic expressions for specific heat in the high and low temperature limits for such systems using Tsallis statistics.

Findings

Exact high-temperature specific heat expression for rigid rotators.

Perturbative low-temperature specific heat approximation.

Evidence of mixing between translational and rotational degrees of freedom.

Abstract

We obtain an analytic expression for the specific heat of a system of N rigid rotators exactly in the high temperature limit, and via a pertubative approach in the low temperature limit. We then evaluate the specific heat of a diatomic gas with both translational and rotational degrees of freedom, and conclude that there is a mixing between the translational and rotational degrees of freedom in nonextensive statistics.