Dolan, Brian P. (2011) Pressure and volume in the first law of black hole thermodynamics. Classical and Quantum Gravity, 28. ISSN 0264-9381

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Abstract

The mass of a black hole is interpreted, in terms of thermodynamic potentials, as being the enthalpy, with the pressure given by the cosmological constant. The volume is then defined as being the Legendre transform of the pressure and the resulting relation between volume and pressure is explored in the case of positive pressure. A virial expansion is developed and a van der Waals like critical point determined. The first law of black hole thermodynamics includes a PdV term which modifies the maximal efficiency of a Penrose process. It is shown that, in four dimensional space-time with a negative cosmological constant, an extremal charged rotating black hole can have an efficiency of up to 75%, while for an electrically neutral rotating back hole this figure is reduced to 52%, compared to the corresponding values of 50% and 29% respectively when the cosmological constant is zero.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology; High Energy Physics; thermodynamics;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Mathematical Physics
Item ID:	267
Depositing User:	Dr. Brian Dolan
Date Deposited:	27 Jan 2012 10:03
Journal or Publication Title:	Classical and Quantum Gravity
Publisher:	Institute of Physics
Refereed:	Yes
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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