Relativistic Heat Conduction in the Large-Flux Regime

Abstract

We propose a general procedure for evaluating, directly from microphysics, the constitutive relations of heat-conducting fluids in regimes of large fluxes of heat. Our choice of hydrodynamic formalism is Carter’s two-fluid theory, which happens to coincide with Öttinger’s GENERIC theory for relativistic heat conduction. This is a natural framework, as it should correctly describe the relativistic “inertia of heat” as well as the subtle interplay between reversible and irreversible couplings. We provide two concrete applications of our procedure, where the constitutive relations are evaluated, respectively, from maximum entropy hydrodynamics and Chapman–Enskog theory.

Keywords

• relativistic hydrodynamics
• heat conduction
• extended irreversible thermodynamics
• GENERIC formalism
• kinetic theory