Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 63 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Substitute the Killing-flow four-acceleration and stationary pressure into the relativistic Euler equation. It givesFor the equation of state of blackbody radiation, , this becomes . The barotropic hydrostatic first integral therefore gives, on each connected nonvacuum fluid region,This is the stationary radiation density law. Combining it with the Stefan–Boltzmann law also gives the Tolman–Ehrenfest relation .
At a regular finite free surface, a smooth Killing vector field has finite norm. Hence cannot approach zero there. More globally, its norm has a finite upper bound on a compact regular fluid closure, which bounds the density away from zero whenever . If the timelike norm instead tends to zero, the density diverges. Thus a radiation fluid has no regular free surface: a finite radiation-filled cavity needs a material wall supporting nonzero pressure, rather than an unsupported radiation-vacuum interface.
Stationary radiation density 2026-10-14
The equation of state of isotropic blackbody radiation is . The barotropic hydrostatic first integral gives . The Stefan–Boltzmann law then yields the Tolman–Ehrenfest relation . Here for the stationary timelike Killing vector field; its normalization only changes the constants.