Temperature inversion in long-range interacting systems

Abstract

Temperature inversions occur in nature, e.g., in the solar corona and in interstellar molecular clouds: somewhat counterintuitively, denser parts of the system are colder than dilute ones. We propose a simple and appealing way to spontaneously generate temperature inversions in systems with long-range interactions, by preparing them in inhomogeneous thermal equilibrium states and then applying an impulsive perturbation. In similar situations, short-range systems would typically relax to another thermal equilibrium, with uniform temperature profile. By contrast, in long-range systems, the interplay between wave-particle interaction and spatial inhomogeneity drives the system to nonequilibrium stationary states that generically exhibit temperature inversion. We demonstrate this mechanism in a simple mean-field model and in a two-dimensional self-gravitating system. Our work underlines the crucial role the range of interparticle interaction plays in determining the nature of steady states out of thermal equilibrium.

5 pages + 6 pages of appendix, 5 figures, REVTeX 4-1. To appear in Physical Review E (Rapid Communications). Appendix will be published online-only as Supplemental Material

References in corpus (2)

• Nonequilibrium stationary states of 3D self-gravitating systems
• Polytropic models of filamentary interstellar clouds - I. Structure and stability

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