The Gibbs paradox, the Landauer principle and the irreversibility associated with tilted observers

Abstract

It is well known that, in the context of General Relativity, some spacetimes, when described by a congruence of comoving observers, may consist in a distribution of a perfect (non-dissipative) fluid, whereas the same spacetime as seen by a "tilted"' (Lorentz-boosted) congruence of observers, may exhibit the presence of dissipative processes. As we shall see, the appearence of entropy producing processes are related to the tight dependence of entropy on the specific congruence of observers. This fact is well illustrated by the Gibbs paradox. The appearance of such dissipative processes, as required by the Landauer principle, are necessary, in order to erase the different amount of information stored by comoving observers, with respect to tilted ones.Comment: 10 pages Latex. Invited contribution for the special issue "Advances in Relativistic Statistical Mechanics" published in Entrop