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Updated: Feb 9, 2026

Non-equilibrium Microwave Plasma for Efficient High Temperature Chemistry
Published on: August 1, 2017
The impact of tensorial temperature on equilibrium thermodynamics
Marcello Sega1, Pál Jedlovszky
1University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, Boltzmangasse 5, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. marcello.sega@univie.ac.at.
Abstract:
Thermodynamic temperature is a scalar. However, the connection with the kinetic energy tensor in statistical mechanics leaves open the possibility to define a tensorial temperature. This concept has sometimes been used to simulate isothermal conditions in out-of-equilibrium systems. Here, we show, by studying a sessile water droplet, that a tensorial temperature leads to the wrong thermodynamics, or, in other words, the equilibrium isothermal ensemble generated using a tensorial temperature is not the canonical one, with interfacial free energies that can differ up to 40% from the correct ones.
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