Other
Scientific paper
Feb 1983
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1983mnras.202..717k&link_type=abstract
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 202, Feb. 1983, p. 717-733.
Other
7
Entropy, Gravitation, Jeans Theory, Thermodynamics, Gravitational Effects, Spheres, Variations
Scientific paper
This paper re-examines the stability of self-gravitating systems from the standpoint of the theory of thermodynamic fluctuations. If one considers a self-gravitating sphere of particles embedded in a heat bath of gravitationally non-interacting particles, one finds that, for spheres containing sufficiently many particles, the entropy-extremizing configuration for the total system is not a local entropy maximum with respect to interactions between the sphere and the bath. This phenomenon, which first arises when the size of the sphere is comparable to its Jeans length, leads to a prediction of unbounded fluctuations in temperature, volume and other thermodynamic quantities. As one extends the sequence of entropy-extremizing configurations to increasingly large spheres, one passes through an infinite number of critical points where the heat capacity and compressibility of the sphere alternately vanish and diverge.
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