Thermal radiation equilibrium: (nonrelativistic) classical mechanics versus (relativistic) classical electrodynamics

Abstract

Physics students continue to be taught the erroneous idea that classical physics leads inevitably to energy equipartition, and hence to the Rayleigh–Jeans law for thermal radiation equilibrium. Actually, energy equipartition is appropriate only for nonrelativistic classical mechanics, but has only limited relevance for a relativistic theory such as classical electrodynamics. In this article, we discuss harmonic-oscillator thermal equilibrium from three different perspectives. First, we contrast the thermal equilibrium of nonrelativistic mechanical oscillators (where point collisions are allowed and frequency is irrelevant) with the equilibrium of relativistic radiation modes (where frequency is crucial). The Rayleigh–Jeans law appears from applying a dipole-radiation approximation to impose the nonrelativistic mechanical equilibrium on the radiation spectrum. In this discussion, we note the possibility of zero-point energy for relativistic radiation, which possibility does not arise for nonrelativistic classical-mechanical systems. Second, we turn to a simple electromagnetic model of a harmonic oscillator and show that the oscillator is fully in radiation equilibrium (which involves all radiation multipoles, dipole, quadrupole, etc) with classical electromagnetic zero-point radiation, but is not in equilibrium with the Rayleigh–Jeans spectrum. Finally, we discuss the contrast between the flexibility of nonrelativistic mechanics with its arbitrary potential functions allowing separate scalings for length, time, and energy, with the sharply-controlled behavior of relativistic classical electrodynamics with its single scaling connecting together the scales for length, time, and energy. It is emphasized that within classical physics, energy-sharing, velocity-dependent damping is associated with the low-frequency, nonrelativistic part of the Planck thermal radiation spectrum, whereas acceleration-dependent radiation damping is associated with the high-frequency adiabatically-invariant and Lorentz-invariant part of the spectrum corresponding to zero-point radiation.