Thermal time and Tolman-Ehrenfest effect: `Temperature as the speed of time'

DOI10.1088/0264-9381/28/7/075007MaRDI QIDQ2999455zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Matteo Smerlak, Carlo Rovelli

Publication date 13 May 2011

Published in Classical and Quantum Gravity (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1005.2985

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Classical and relativistic thermodynamics (80A10) Einstein's equations (general structure, canonical formalism, Cauchy problems) (83C05) Relativistic gravitational theories other than Einstein's, including asymmetric field theories (83D05)

Abstract: The notion of thermal time has been introduced as a possible basis for a fully general-relativistic thermodynamics. Here we study this notion in the restricted context of stationary spacetimes. We show that the Tolman-Ehrenfest effect (in a stationary gravitational field, temperature is not constant in space at thermal equilibrium) can be derived very simply by applying the equivalence principle to a key property of thermal time: at equilibrium, temperature is the rate of thermal time with respect to proper time - the `speed of (thermal) time'. Unlike other published derivations of the Tolman-Ehrenfest relation, this one is free from any further dynamical assumption, thereby illustrating the physical import of the notion of thermal time.

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Cited in

(23)

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• Temperatures of renormalizable quantum field theories in curved spacetime
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• Gravito-thermal transports, Onsager reciprocal relation and gravitational Wiedemann-Franz law
• The accelerating universe in a noncommutative analytically continued foliated quantum gravity
• On the foundation of space and time by quantum-events
• Diffusion in curved spacetimes
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