Formulation of the relativistic heat equation and the relativistic kinetic Fokker-Planck equation using GENERIC

Abstract

In this paper, we formulate the relativistic heat equation and the relativistic kinetic Fokker-Planck equations into the GENERIC (General Equation for Non-Equilibrium Reversible-Irreversible Coupling) framework. We also show that the relativistic Maxwellian distribution is the stationary solution of the latter. The GENERIC formulation provides an alternative justification that the two equations are meaningful relativistic generalizations of their nonrelativistic counterparts.