Talk:Partition function (mathematics)

Hilbert space

I liked the broad scope of this article. What struck me of something I wasn't aware of was the story with the imaginary unit i as the unit measure in Hilbert space for Quantum field theory. It's only mentioned, would be nice to get some better explanation of that, perhaps not here but with some link to something else. (97.80.103.33 (talk) 03:26, 20 October 2011 (UTC))

I'll add something when I find it, although at the current rate, this may take years. linas (talk) 05:36, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Markov property of what stochastic process

The partition function occurs in many problems of probability theory because, in situations where there is a natural symmetry, its associated probability measure, the Gibbs measure, has the Markov property.

Isn't the associated measure simply the Boltzmann distribution (the Boltzmann exponentials divided by Z), a probability measure on the state space? How can this measure have the Markov property? It is not a stochastic process. It is an end state or stationary state of a stochastic process that has not been properly introduced.

89.217.26.113 (talk) 11:12, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Renaming the Page

It seems that the majority of the page is focused on physics applications of the partition function, rather than general mathematical applications of the partition function. I would propose that either the page be named to reflect this (such as Partition Function (Physics)), or that the content be significantly re-formulated in a more general manner. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mgibby5 (talk • contribs) 13:27, 12 March 2015 (UTC)