Entropy of Self-Gravitating Anisotropic Matter

Abstract

We examine the entropy of self-gravitating anisotropic matter confined to a box in the context of generalrelativity. The configuration of self-gravitating matter is spherically symmetric, but has anisotropic pressure of which angular part is different from the radial part. We deduce the entropy from the relation between the thermodynamical laws and the continuity equation. The variational equation for this entropy is shown to reproduce the gravitational field equation for the anisotropic matter. This result re-assures us the correspondence between gravity and thermodynamics. We apply this method to calculate the entropies of a few objects such as compact star and wormholes.