We show through a nonlinear Fokker-Planck formalism, and confirm by molecular dynamics simulations, that the overdamped motion of interacting particles at $T=0$, where $T$ is the temperature of a thermal bath connected to the system, can be directly associated with Tsallis thermostatistics. For sufficiently high values of $T$, the distribution of particles becomes Gaussian, so that the classical Boltzmann-Gibbs behavior is recovered. For intermediate temperatures of the thermal bath, the system displays a mixed behavior that follows a novel type of thermostatistics, where the entropy is given by a linear combination of Tsallis and Boltzmann-Gibbs entropies.

• Received 8 August 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.260601