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Complaints on the naming of "enthalpy" in moca #295

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qchempku2017 opened this issue Dec 8, 2022 · 1 comment
Open

Complaints on the naming of "enthalpy" in moca #295

qchempku2017 opened this issue Dec 8, 2022 · 1 comment
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code review Discussion and review of a specific source file documentation Improvements or additions to documentation

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@qchempku2017
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qchempku2017 commented Dec 8, 2022

File Name Module Path Authors
ensemble.py smol.moca Luis

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The name "enthalpy" has confused many smol users, including @zhongpc and @YunyeongChoi . This name is designated to the quantity H that appears in the exponential part of ensemble distribution function as P=exp(-beta* H), where H can be E-mu N in the semigrand-canonical ensemble, but is actually not the thermodynamic enthalpy at all. It might be better to change its name to "legendre_transformed_energy" or something cleaner, etc.

@qchempku2017 qchempku2017 added the code review Discussion and review of a specific source file label Dec 8, 2022
@lbluque
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lbluque commented Dec 9, 2022

The use of the word "enthalpy" is precisely to capture both cases you mention. In all generality, what you said is correct, think of enthalpy as $H$ in $P = exp(-\beta* H)$. Or equivalently call it whatever changes the energy of the system excluding heat, as in $H$ that gives heat capacity $C = \frac{d H}{d T}$.

This use of the word "enthalpy" as a "generalized enthalpy" is documented in the code. Unfortunately, changing it to something more verbose does not add much and will require many backward incompatible changes in the sampler, kernel, samplecontainer, etc...

My suggestion is to simply make the use clear in the documentation and appropriate example notebooks. A PR with any edits accordingly is welcome.

@lbluque lbluque added the documentation Improvements or additions to documentation label Jan 19, 2023
@lbluque lbluque changed the title [Code Review] Complaints on the naming of "enthalpy" in moca Complaints on the naming of "enthalpy" in moca Sep 29, 2023
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