Ring statistics in 2D-silica: effective temperatures in equilibrium

TL;DR

This paper investigates the thermodynamic behavior of ring structures in 2D-silica, revealing that their effective temperature varies with subsystem size due to strong local energy correlations, supported by models and analytical analysis.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of scale-dependent effective temperatures in 2D-silica rings, linking local energy correlations to thermodynamic properties.

Findings

Ring statistics follow Boltzmann behavior with reduced effective temperature.

Effective temperature depends on the subsystem length scale.

Strong local positive energy correlations influence thermodynamic properties.

Abstract

The thermodynamic properties of subsystems in strong interaction with the neighborhood can largely differ from the standard behavior. Here we study the thermodynamic properties of rings and triplets in equilibrated disordered 2D-silica. Their statistics follows a Boltzmann behavior, albeit with a strongly reduced temperature. This effective temperature strongly depends on the length scale of the chosen subsystem. From a systematic analysis of the 1D Ising model and an analytically solvable model we suggest that these observations reflect the presence of strong local positive energy correlations.