Gravity from equilibrium thermodynamics of stretched light cones
arXiv:2509.08566 · doi:10.1103/y9rz-b88v
Abstract
This work digs into the connection between gravity and thermodynamics of stretched light cones (SLC). They are associated with uniformly accelerating observers, who endow the SLC with a physical notion of temperature via the Unruh effect. We compute the expansion, shear, and vorticity of the SLC to fully study its dynamics and account for the possibility of previously predicted non-equilibrium entropy production. For consistency, we prove the equivalence of the two different geometrical methods available for studying the SLCs' properties. Then, we apply the energy balance and use Clausius' relation to relate the geometrical properties of the SLC with energy fluxes crossing its surface, showing that it encodes the equations governing the gravitational dynamics. We show here how this analysis can be fully carried in terms of equilibrium thermodynamics due to the vanishing of shear, and how one can identify a work term related to the acceleration of the observer.
14 pages, 2 figures. Matches the published version
References in corpus (29)
- Thermodynamics of Spacetime: The Einstein Equation of State
- Entropy and Area
- Thermodynamical Aspects of Gravity: New insights
- Entanglement entropy of black holes
- Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics of Spacetime
- Gravitation from Entanglement in Holographic CFTs
- Entanglement Equilibrium and the Einstein Equation
- The Raychaudhuri equations: a brief review
- Nonlinear Gravity from Entanglement in Conformal Field Theories
- Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics of Spacetime: the Role of Gravitational Dissipation
- Minimal conditions for the existence of a Hawking-like flux
- Hawking-like radiation from evolving black holes and compact horizonless objects
- Gravitational Thermodynamics of Causal Diamonds in (A)dS
- Unimodular Gravity vs General Relativity: A status report
- Riemann Normal Coordinate expansions using Cadabra
- Horizon entropy and higher curvature equations of state
- Unruh-DeWitt detector event rate for trajectories with time-dependent acceleration
- Tolman mass, generalized surface gravity, and entropy bounds
- Equilibrium to Einstein: Entanglement, Thermodynamics, and Gravity
- Einstein's Equations from the Stretched Future Light Cone
- Geometry of small causal diamonds
- Clausius entropy for arbitrary bifurcate null surfaces
- The universality of black hole thermodynamics
- Higher derivative gravity: field equation as the equation of state
- Area deficits and the Bel-Robinson tensor
- A Local First Law of Gravity
- From spacetime thermodynamics to Weyl transverse gravity
- Recovering semiclassical Einstein's equation using generalized entropy
- Gravity from thermodynamics in vacuum: Lorentz invariance and the role of Bel-Robinson tensor