Saturday, October 21, 2017

thermodynamics - Is there a relativistic generalization of the Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution?


The Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution in 3D space is $$ f(v)dv = 4\pi \left(\frac{m}{2\pi k_B T}\right)^{3/2} v^2 \exp\left(-\frac{m v^2}{2k_B T}\right)dv$$ It gives the probability for a single particle to have a speed in the intervall $[v,v+dv]$. But this probability is not zero for speeds $v > c $ in conflict with special relativity.


Is there a generalization of the Maxwell-Boltzmann velocity distribution which is valid also in the relativistic regime so that $f(v) = 0$ for $v>c$ ? And how can it be derived? Or can a single particle distribution simply not exist for relativistic speeds, because for high energies, we always have pair-production meaning the particle number is not conserved and a single particle distribution can not be defined in a consistent way?




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