General proof of the entropy principle for self-gravitating fluid in static spacetimes

Abstract

We show that for any perfect fluid in a static spacetime, if the Einstein constraint equation is satisfied and the temperature of the fluid obeys Tolman's law, then the other components of Einstein's equation are implied by the assumption that the total entropy of the fluid achieves an extremum for fixed total particle number and for all variations of metric with certain boundary conditions. Conversely, one can show that the extrema of the total entropy of the fluid are implied by Einstein's equation. Compared to previous works on this issue, we do not require spherical symmetry for the spacetime. Our results suggest a general and solid connection between thermodynamics and general relativity.