Chapter 8: Relativistic Classical and Quantum Statistical Mechanics

In this chapter, we shall discuss the relativistic statistical mechanics of a many body system, for which the points in space time constitute the fundamental entities for which distribution functions must be constructed to achieve a manifestly covariant theory. The counting of events is essentially equivalent to the counting of world lines corresponding to particles. Therefore one should expect that, as we indeed find, the statistical mechanics of events is therefore closely related to the theory of statistical mechanics of particles, as developed, for example, in Synge [Synge (1957); see also, de Groot (1980)]. We construct a canonical Gibbs ensemble based on a microcanonical ensemble, enabling us to define a temperature and the basic thermodynamic functions [Horwitz (1981)]…