Entropic force for quantum particles

Abstract

Entropic force has been drawing the attention of theoretical physicists following E Verlinde’s work in 2011 to derive Newton’s second law and Einstein’s field equations of general relativity. In this paper, we extend the idea of entropic force to the distribution of quantum particles. Starting from the definition of Shannon entropy for continuous variables, here we have derived quantum osmotic pressure as well as the consequent entropic forces for bosonic and fermionic particles. The entropic force is computed explicitly for a pair of bosons and fermions. The low temperature limit of this result show that the entropic force for bosons is similar to Hooke’s law of elasticity revealing the importance of this idea in the formation of a Bose–Einstein condensate. For fermions, the low temperature limit boils down to the well known Neumann’s radial force and also reveals the Pauli’s exclusion principle. The classical limit of the entropic force between quantum particles is then discussed. As a further example, the entropic force for quantum particles in noncommutative space is also computed. The result reveals a violation of the Pauli exclusion principle for fermions in noncommutative space.