Holographic fluids: a thermodynamic road to quantum physics

Abstract

Quantum mechanics, superfluids, and capillary fluids are closely related: it is thermodynamics that links them. In this paper, the Liu procedure is used to analyze the thermodynamic requirements. A comparison with the traditional method of divergence separation highlights the role of spacetime. It is shown that perfect Korteweg fluids are holographic. The conditions under which a complex field can represent the density and velocity fields of the fluid, and where the complex scalar field becomes a wave function of quantum mechanics, are explored. The bridge between the field and particle representations of a physical system is holography, and the key to holography is the Second Law of thermodynamics.Comment: 33 pages, no figures, accepted in Physics of Fluid