Thermodynamics of Radiation Pressure and Photon Momentum

Abstract

Theoretical analyses of radiation pressure and photon momentum in the past 150 years have focused almost exclusively on classical and/or quantum theories of electrodynamics. In these analyses, Maxwell's equations, the properties of polarizable and/or magnetizable material media, and the stress tensors of Maxwell, Abraham, Minkowski, Chu, and Einstein-Laub have typically played prominent roles. Each stress tensor has subsequently been manipulated to yield its own expressions for the electromagnetic (EM) force, torque, energy, and linear as well as angular momentum densities of the EM field. This paper presents an alternative view of radiation pressure from the perspective of thermal physics, invoking the properties of blackbody radiation in conjunction with empty as well as gas-filled cavities that contain EM energy in thermal equilibrium with the container's walls. In this type of analysis, Planck's quantum hypothesis, the spectral distribution of the trapped radiation, the entropy of the photon gas, and Einstein's A and B coefficients play central roles.

arXiv comment20 pages, 7 figures, 59 equations, 2 appendices, 26 references

References in corpus (2)

• On the Foundational Equations of the Classical Theory of Electrodynamics
• New Perspective on the Reciprocity Theorem of Classical Electrodynamics

Cited by in corpus (5)

• A novel approach to photon transfer conversion gain estimation
• Thermodynamics of Radiation Pressure and Photon Momentum (Part 2)
• Quantization of the electromagnetic field, entropy of an ideal monoatomic gas, and the birth of Bose-Einstein statistics
• Realising Einstein's mirror: Optomechanical damping with a thermal photon gas
• The thermodynamics of light