2006/11/13 by Bruno Crosignani, Crosignani, Bruno, Paolo Di Porto +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Classical Physics (physics.class-ph) #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #FOS: Physical sciences #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.class-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0611323
12 pages, 1 figure
arxiv created 2006/11/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We present a comparison between the random motion of an adiabatic and a diathermal piston sliding in a perfect gas. In particular, their dynamical behaviour, if investigated by means of Langevin's approach, shows the amplitude of the adiabatic-piston random displacements around the equilibrium position to be much larger (by a factor (M/m)^(1/2), where M and m are the piston mass and the mass of the single gas molecule) than that of the diathermal piston. The origin of this intriguing difference, which is accounted for in the frame of Langevin's approach, is also explored in terms of a space-phase analysis.