Equilibrium and nonequilibrium thermodynamics of a photon gas in the near field

Abstract

In this paper, we study the near-field thermodynamics of a photon gas at equilibrium as well as out-of-equilibrium in the presence of dissipative effects. As a consequence of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, we are able to eliminate the low-frequency modes in both cases, providing an analytical expression for the near-field entropy. In addition, we obtain the entropic-force contributions to the Casimir effect. At zero temperature the well-known 1/l^4 behavior of the pressure is obtained. In the nonequilibrium case, we compute the entropy production, showing that the excess of heat in each bodies must be dissipated into the respective thermal reservoirs.