A Variational Principle for General Polymer Systems

Abstract

A new model for classical statistical mechanics of interacting extended particles (polymers) is introduced. First, the construction of the configuration space for polymer systems is given. Then the existence of the thermodynamic limit of the local pressure is derived. For this limit which is called the pressure of the system a variational principle is proved. Finally, for given interaction, the class of equilibrium states determined by this variational principle is proved to coincide with the class of translation invariant Gibbs states.