Abstract

Superstatistics describes nonequilibrium steady states as superpositions of canonical ensembles with a probability distribution of temperatures. Rather than assume a certain distribution of temperature, recently [2020 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 53 045004] we have discussed general conditions under which a system in contact with a finite environment can be described by superstatistics together with a physically interpretable, microscopic definition of temperature. In this work, we present a new interpretation of this result in terms of the standard maximum entropy principle using conditional expectation constraints, and provide an example model where this framework can be tested.