23 research outputs found
Ideal Stars and General Relativity
We study a system of differential equations that governs the distribution of
matter in the theory of General Relativity. The new element in this paper is
the use of a dynamical action principle that includes all the degrees of
freedom, matter as well as metric. The matter lagrangian defines a relativistic
version of non-viscous, isentropic hydrodynamics. The matter fields are a
scalar density and a velocity potential; the conventional, four-vector velocity
field is replaced by the gradient of the potential and its scale is fixed by
one of the eulerian equations of motion, an innovation that significantly
affects the imposition of boundary conditions. If the density is integrable at
infinity, then the metric approaches the Schwarzschild metric at large
distances. There are stars without boundary and with finite total mass; the
metric shows rapid variation in the neighbourhood of the Schwarzschild radius
and there is a very small core where a singularity indicates that the gas laws
break down. For stars with boundary there emerges a new, critical relation
between the radius and the gravitational mass, a consequence of the stronger
boundary conditions. Tentative applications are suggested, to certain Red
Giants, and to neutron stars, but the investigation reported here was limited
to polytropic equations of state. Comparison with the results of Oppenheimer
and Volkoff on neutron cores shows a close agreement of numerical results.
However, in the model the boundary of the star is fixed uniquely by the
required matching of the interior metric to the external Schwarzschild metric,
which is not the case in the traditional approach.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figure
On Relativistic Material Reference Systems
This work closes certain gaps in the literature on material reference systems
in general relativity. It is shown that perfect fluids are a special case of
DeWitt's relativistic elastic media and that the velocity--potential formalism
for perfect fluids can be interpreted as describing a perfect fluid coupled to
a fleet of clocks. A Hamiltonian analysis of the elastic media with clocks is
carried out and the constraints that arise when the system is coupled to
gravity are studied. When the Hamiltonian constraint is resolved with respect
to the clock momentum, the resulting true Hamiltonian is found to be a
functional only of the gravitational variables. The true Hamiltonian is
explicitly displayed when the medium is dust, and is shown to depend on the
detailed construction of the clocks.Comment: 18 pages, ReVTe
A Variational Procedure for Time-Dependent Processes
A simple variational Lagrangian is proposed for the time development of an
arbitrary density matrix, employing the "factorization" of the density. Only
the "kinetic energy" appears in the Lagrangian. The formalism applies to pure
and mixed state cases, the Navier-Stokes equations of hydrodynamics, transport
theory, etc. It recaptures the Least Dissipation Function condition of
Rayleigh-Onsager {\bf and in practical applications is flexible}. The
variational proposal is tested on a two level system interacting that is
subject, in one instance, to an interaction with a single oscillator and, in
another, that evolves in a dissipative mode.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figure
Variational description of multi-fluid hydrodynamics: Uncharged fluids
We present a formalism for Newtonian multi-fluid hydrodynamics derived from
an unconstrained variational principle. This approach provides a natural way of
obtaining the general equations of motion for a wide range of hydrodynamic
systems containing an arbitrary number of interacting fluids and superfluids.
In addition to spatial variations we use ``time shifts'' in the variational
principle, which allows us to describe dissipative processes with entropy
creation, such as chemical reactions, friction or the effects of external
non-conservative forces. The resulting framework incorporates the
generalization of the entrainment effect originally discussed in the case of
the mixture of two superfluids by Andreev and Bashkin. In addition to the
conservation of energy and momentum, we derive the generalized conservation
laws of vorticity and helicity, and the special case of Ertel's theorem for the
single perfect fluid.
We explicitly discuss the application of this framework to thermally
conducting fluids, superfluids, and superfluid neutron star matter. The
equations governing thermally conducting fluids are found to be more general
than the standard description, as the effect of entrainment usually seems to be
overlooked in this context. In the case of superfluid He4 we recover the
Landau--Khalatnikov equations of the two-fluid model via a translation to the
``orthodox'' framework of superfluidity, which is based on a rather awkward
choice of variables. Our two-fluid model for superfluid neutron star matter
allows for dissipation via mutual friction and also ``transfusion'' via
beta-reactions between the neutron fluid and the proton-electron fluid.Comment: uses RevTeX 4; 20 pages. To appear in PRD. v2: removed discussion of
charged fluids and coupling to electromagnetic fields, which are submitted as
a separate paper for a clearer presentation v3: fixed typo in Eq.(9), updated
some reference