Thermodynamics of photons on fractals

Oct, 2010
5 pages
Published in:
  • Phys.Rev.Lett. 105 (2010) 230407
e-Print:

Citations per year

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Abstract: (arXiv)
A thermodynamical treatment of a massless scalar field (a 'photon') confined to a fractal spatial manifold leads to an equation of state relating pressure to internal energy, PVs=U/dsP V_s=U/d_s, where dsd_s is the spectral dimension and VsV_s defines the 'spectral volume'. For regular manifolds, VsV_s coincides with the usual geometric spatial volume, but on a fractal this is not necessarily the case. This is further evidence that on a fractal, momentum space can have a different dimension than position space. Our analysis also provides a natural definition of the vacuum (Casimir) energy of a fractal. We suggest ways that these unusual properties might be probed experimentally.
  • 11.10.Kk
  • 04.62.+v
  • 05.30.-d
  • field theory: scalar: massless
  • fractal
  • dimension: spectral
  • photon
  • thermodynamics
  • vacuum state: energy
  • geometry