Exact Work Distribution and Jarzynski's Equality of a Relativistic Particle in an Expanding Piston

Abstract

We study the non-equilibrium work in a pedagogical model of relativistic ideal gas. We obtain the exact work distribution and verify the Jarzynski's equality. In the non-relativistic limit, our results recover the non-relativistic results [arXiv:cond-mat/0502434]. We also find that, unlike the non-relativistic case, the work distribution no longer has zeros and the number of collisions in this relativistic gas model is finite. In addition, based on an analysis of the experimental parameters, we conclude that it is difficult to detect the relativistic effects of the work distribution of the ideal gas in a piston system with the current experimental techniques.