Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2006/ii/paper-2/10d/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2006 ii Paper 2 10D Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
An adiabatic change of box size preserves the mode labels, whose momenta scale as . Since , differentiation gives . Occupation numbers are fixed under this slow mechanical change, so summing the changes in the individual particle energies givesComparison with at fixed entropy and particle number yieldsThe integration notation means summing over the original momentum-mode labels; it does not assume that the density in momentum space is unchanged after rescaling. In the ultrarelativistic limit , so and .
Adiabatic radiation obeys , giving energy density proportional to . Equilibrium photon energy density is proportional to , so . Therefore the photon number in a comoving volume, , is constant. Its entropy is also constant: photon entropy density is . Photon number is not a microscopic conserved charge, but equilibrium processes maintaining the spectrum do not alter this comoving-number scaling in adiabatic expansion; entropy-producing processes would invalidate the assumptions.
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