Statistical mechanics of relativistic one-dimensional self-gravitating systems

We consider the statistical mechanics of a general relativistic one-dimensional self-gravitating system. The system consists of N particles coupled to lineal gravity and can be considered as a model of N relativistically interacting sheets of uniform mass. The partition function and one-particle dis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics, 2002-02, Vol.65 (2 Pt 2), p.026128-026128
Main Authors: Mann, R B, Chak, P
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:We consider the statistical mechanics of a general relativistic one-dimensional self-gravitating system. The system consists of N particles coupled to lineal gravity and can be considered as a model of N relativistically interacting sheets of uniform mass. The partition function and one-particle distribution functions are computed to leading order in 1/c where c is the speed of light; as c --> infinity results for the nonrelativistic one-dimensional self-gravitating system are recovered. We find that relativistic effects generally cause both position and momentum distribution functions to become more sharply peaked, and that the temperature of a relativistic gas is smaller than its nonrelativistic counterpart at the same fixed energy. We consider the large-N limit of our results and compare this to the nonrelativistic case.
ISSN:1539-3755
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevE.65.026128