2008/04/30 by Zhong Chao Wu
Physics and Astronomy · #Absolute time and space #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Doubly special relativity #Frame (networking) #General relativity #Reference frame #Special relativity #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #Theory of relativity #astro-ph #cond-mat.stat-mech #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/88/20005
published as Europhys.Lett.88:20005,2009 · 11 pages, revised version
openalex publication_date 2009/10/01 · arxiv created 2009/11/11 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2019/06/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
There exist several prescriptions for identifying the notion of temperature in special relativity. We argue that the inverse-temperature 4-vector is the only viable option from the laws of thermodynamics, and is a future-directed timelike 4-vector. Using a superfluidity thought experiment, one can show that is not necessarily along the time direction of the comoving frame of the system, as is usually thought. It is conjectured that, for an isolated system, the 4-vector is determined from the entropy-maximum principle.