Statistical theory of quasistationary states beyond the single water-bag case study

Abstract

An analytical solution for the out-of-equilibrium quasistationary states of the paradigmatic Hamiltonian mean field (HMF) model can be obtained from a maximum entropy principle. The theory has been so far tested with reference to a specific class of initial condition, the so called (single-level) water-bag type. In this paper a step forward is taken by considering an arbitrary number of overlapping water bags. The theory is benchmarked to direct microcanonical simulations performed for the case of a two-level water-bag. The comparison is shown to return an excellent agreement.