How can relativity make Navier-Stokes unstable?

by Dr Lorenzo Gavassino (Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Warsaw, Poland)

Tuesday 27 Oct 2020, 17:00 → 19:00 Asia/Tehran

Online

Webinar on Quark Matter and Relativistic Hydrodynamics

Abstract:

The first-order theories for the dissipation of Eckart and Landau-Lifshitz predict that the thermodynamic equilibrium is unstable under perturbations. This is in stark contrast to our understanding of dissipation as the phenomenon which drives systems towards equilibrium and not far from it. How is it even possible that the most straightforward relativistic generalizations of Navier-Stokes exhibit such a different behavior from their Newtonian limits? In this talk, I will present a new perspective on this old problem. I will explain the mathematical subtleties which are hidden when one moves from a Newtonian to a relativistic setting and I will provide a thermodynamic interpretation of this instability. Under this new light, the difference between the "frame-stabilized" first-order theories and the second-order theory of Israel and Stewart is simply the difference between the Navier-Stokes approach and the philosophy of Extended Irreversible Thermodynamics, transported to a relativistic setting. The talk is based on 10.1103/PhysRevD.102.043018.

Join          Webpage