Symplectic Geometry

A classification of coadjoint orbits carrying Gibbs ensembles

A coadjoint orbit $O_λ\subseteq {\mathfrak g}^*$ of a Lie group $G$ is said to carry a Gibbs ensemble if the set of all $x \in {\mathfrak g}$, for which the function $α\mapsto e^{-α(x)}$ on the orbit is integrable with respect to the Liouville measure, has non-empty interior $Ω_λ$. We describe a classification of all coadjoint orbits of finite-dimensional Lie algebras with this property. In the context of Souriau's Lie group thermodynamics, the subset $Ω_λ$ is the geometric temperature, a parameter space for a family of Gibbs measures on the coadjoint orbit. The corresponding Fenchel--Legendre transform maps $Ω_λ/{\mathfrak z}({\mathfrak g})$ diffeomorphically onto the interior of the convex hull of the coadjoint orbit $O_λ$. This provides an interesting perspective on the underlying information geometry. We also show that already the integrability of $e^{-α(x)}$ for one $x \in {\mathfrak g}$ implies that $Ω_λ\not=\emptyset$ and that, for general Hamiltonian actions, the existence of Gibbs measures implies that the range of the momentum maps consists of coadjoint orbits $O_λ$ as above.