2006-01-07

thermodynamics, color

I reminded myself that when a rapidly creating and annihilating particle species is in thermodynamic equilibrium with its decay products, its abundance is proportional to the momentum space volume available to it, but supressed by a Boltzmann factor on its mass relative to the temperature. For highly relativistic situations (temperature much greater than mass), the equilibrium abundance goes like T3 (because the momentum is the temperature and there is no significant Boltzmann suppression). For non-relativistic situations, the abundance goes like (mT)3/2, (because the momentum is proportional to the geometric mean of the mass and kinetic energy) times the Boltzmann factor exp(−m/T). Duh!

I started to write up my ground-breaking and earth-shattering treatise on RGB to CMYK conversion. Get ready, world!

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