Jorn Dunkel (University of Cambridge) : Brownian motion and thermodynamics in special relativity
→
Europe/Budapest
Description
The generalization of Brownian motion and thermodynamics within Einstein's
theory of relativity
poses a number of interesting conceptual challenges. In the first part of
the talk, we will consider
the question of how to construct Langevin models of Markovian diffusion
processes in special relativity.
The second half will be dedicated to the unification of relativity and
thermodynamics, a topic that has stirred
considerable debate over the last 100 years. Part of the difficulty with
relativistic thermodynamics lies in the
fact that thermodynamic variables are nonlocal quantities that single out a
preferred class of hyperplanes in
spacetime. Moreover, there exist different, seemingly equally plausible
ways of defining heat and work in
relativistic systems. These ambiguities led, for example, to the various
competing proposals for the Lorentz
transformation law of temperature. From a more general perspective,
however, traditional “isochronous”
formulations of relativistic thermodynamics seem neither theoretically
satisfactory nor experimentally feasible.
We will discuss how these deficiencies can be resolved by defining
thermodynamic quantities with respect to
the backward-lightcone of an observation event.
