One of the particles acts as a ’thermometer’, the whole system is simulated on the computer.
One of the particles acts as a 'thermometer', the whole system is simulated on the computer. Two seemingly different areas of physics are related in subtle ways: Quantum theory and thermodynamics. How chaos theory mediates between them has now been studied at TU Wien. A single particle has no temperature. It has a certain energy or a certain speed - but it is not possible to translate that into a temperature. Only when dealing with random velocity distributions of many particles, a well-defined temperature emerges. How can the laws of thermodynamics arise from the laws of quantum physics? This is a topic that has attracted growing attention in recent years.
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