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arXiv · 1202.3324

On the inertia of heat

Matteo Smerlak
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Abstract

Does heat have inertia? This question is at the core of a long-standing controversy on Eckart's dissipative relativistic hydrodynamics. Here I show that the troublesome inertial term in Eckart's heat flux arises only if one insists on defining thermal diffusivity as a spacetime constant. I argue that this is the most natural definition, and that all confusion disappears if one considers instead the space-dependent comoving diffusivity, in line with the fact that, in the presence of gravity, space is an inhomogeneous medium.

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Matteo Smerlak. 2012-02-15. On the inertia of heat. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2012-12072-4

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