Bose-Einstein condensation of free photons in thermal equilibrium

✍ Scribed by Eberhard E. Müller

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 507 KB
• Volume: 139
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-4371
• DOI: 10.1016/0378-4371(86)90010-5

✦ Synopsis

If conditions can be realized such that a free photon gas could be appropriately described by a canonical ensemble with constrained particle number density, then, above Planck's mean photon density for black body radiation, Bose-Einstein condensation is implied. For a finite reflecting cavity the excess photons would occupy the Dirichlet ground state thereby forming an approximately monochromatic radio wave. A rigorous formalism, developed by Lewis et al., is applied. The thermodynamic functions are calculated in the infinite volume limit where the particle number density is fixed.