One-dimensional gas of hard needles

Abstract

We study a one-dimensional gas of needlelike objects as a testing ground for a formalism that relates the thermodynamic properties of "hard" potentials to the probabilities for contacts between particles. Specifically, we use Monte Carlo methods to calculate the pressure and elasticity coefficient of the hard-needle gas as a function of its density. The results are then compared to the same quantities obtained analytically from a transfer-matrix approach. © 2009 The American Physical Society.