Gravothermal Catastrophe and Tsallis' Generalized Entropy of Self-Gravitating Systems II. Thermodynamic Properties of Stellar Polytrope

TL;DR

This paper explores the thermodynamic properties of stellar self-gravitating systems using Tsallis' generalized entropy, revealing negative and divergent specific heat behaviors linked to instabilities and confirming the non-extensive thermostatistics framework.

Contribution

It provides a detailed thermodynamic analysis of stellar polytropes within Tsallis' non-extensive framework, identifying new instability phenomena at specific polytrope indices.

Findings

Negative specific heat confirms thermodynamic instability.

Divergent specific heat at polytrope index n>3 indicates new instability.

Second variation of free energy aligns with stability conditions.

Abstract

We investigate the thermodynamic properties of stellar self-gravitating system arising from the Tsallis generalized entropy. In particular, physical interpretation of the thermodynamic instability, as has been revealed by previous paper(Taruya & Sakagami, cond-mat/0107494, Physica A 307, 185 (2002)), is discussed in detail based on the non-extensive thermostatistics. Examining the Clausius relation in a quasi-static experiment, we obtain the standard result of thermodynamic relation that the physical temperature of the equilibrium non-extensive system is identified with the inverse of the Lagrange multiplier, $T_{phys}=1/\beta$. Using this relation, the specific heat of total system is computed, and confirm the common feature of self-gravitating system that the presence of negative specific heat leads to the thermodynamic instability. In addition to the gravothermal instability discovered previously, the specific heat shows the curious divergent behavior at the polytrope index $n>3$, suggesting another type of thermodynamic instability. Evaluating the second variation of free energy, we find that the marginal stability condition indicated from the specific heat can be exactly recovered from the second variation of free energy. Thus, the stellar polytropic system is consistently characterized by the non-extensive thermostatistics as a plausible thermal equilibrium state. We also clarify the non-trivial scaling behavior appeared in specific heat and address the origin of non-extensive nature in stellar polytrope.