Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2008/ii/paper-3/10e/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 ii Paper 3 10E Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-20
Write the photon energy density as , where by the Stefan–Boltzmann law. The photon gas has pressure and zero photon chemical potential. The first law of thermodynamics therefore givesDividing by and integrating gives the entropy density of a photon gas:The integration constant is fixed to zero at zero temperature, consistently with the third law of thermodynamics.
The inequality says interactions act much faster than the expansion time, maintaining local thermal equilibrium. For adiabatic reversible expansion with no additional source of entropy, cosmological entropy conservation fixes the entropy in a comoving volume. Since that volume scales as , and the relativistic degrees of freedom are fixed here, is constant. ThusDuring radiation domination, the Friedmann equation gives , and hence . Fast interactions alone would not exclude an additional entropy-producing process; changing relativistic species likewise changes the simple temperature scaling.
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