Ideal gases and degenerate Fermi gases in external torsion fields

Abstract

We investigate the effects of external torsion fields on ideal gases and Fermi gases, and derive a macroscopic quantity, which we call torsion susceptibility. We first consider the Dirac fermions in the Riemann-Cartan spacetime minimally coupled to the background torsion and electromagnetic fields. After applying the Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation, Hamiltonian of a spin-1/2 particle in weak field limit is obtained. The coupling of spin and spatial components of axial torsion vector has a Zeeman-like effect, which removes the degeneracy of energy levels and splits the energy levels with respect to the spin. We calculate the macroscopic effects of the spin-torsion coupling on ideal gases, which satisfying the Boltzmann distribution, and Fermi gases, which satisfying the Fermi-Dirac distribution. The torsion susceptibility of ideal gases is inversely proportional to the temperature and is constant in Fermi gases.