Wallace, David
(2023)
On relativistic temperature.
[Preprint]
Abstract
I revisit the long-running controversy as to the transformation properties of temperature under Lorentz transformations, and argue that, contrary to widespread views in some parts of the literature, `relativistic thermodynamics' should not be understood as a generalization to relativistic physics of an initially non-relativistic theory but as an application of a general thermodynamic framework, neutral as to its spacetime setting, to the specific case of relativity. More specifically, I observe that the general framework of equilibrium thermodynamics incorporates arbitrary conserved quantities in addition to energy and that when that framework is applied to systems in which momentum is conserved and can be transferred between systems, it gives rise to an unambiguous result as to the thermodynamics of moving (including relativistically moving) systems. This leads to an equally unambiguous prediction as to how thermodynamic temperature transforms under Lorentz transformations (an answer coinciding with Einstein's, and Planck's, original results.) That said, one can identify within this framework other quantities which play a temperature-like role and have different transformation properties; at some level it is a matter of convention and semantics which is `the' temperature. I conclude with some brief remarks about the situation in general relativity.
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