Thermodynamics with an Action Principle, heat and gravitation (2nd version)

Abstract

Some features of hydro- and thermodynamics, as applied to atmospheres and to stellar structures, are puzzling: 1. The suggestion, first made by Laplace, that our atmosphere has an adiabatic temperature distribution, is confirmed for the lower layers, but the reason why it should be so is understood only qualitatively. 2. Arguments in which a concept of energy plays a role, in the context of hydro-thermodynamical systems and gravitation, are often flawed, and some familiar results concerning the stability of model stellar structures, first advanced at the end of the 19th century and repeated in the most modern textbooks, are less than completely convincing. 3. The standard treatment of relativistic thermodynamics does not allow for a systematic treatment of mixtures, such as the mixture of a perfect gas with radiation. 4. The concept of mass in applications of general relativity to stellar structure is unsatisfactory. It is proposed that a formulation of thermodynamics as an action principle may be a suitable approach to adopt for a new investigation of these matters. We formulate thermodynamics of ideal gases in terms of an action principle and study the interaction between an ideal gas and the photon gas, or heat. The action principle provides a hamiltonian functional, not available in traditional approaches where familiar expressions for the energy have no operative meaning. The usual polytropic atmosphere in an external gravitational field is examined, in order to determine to what extent it is shaped by radiation. A new formulation of the concept of radiative equilibrium is proposed.