Universality in grey-body radiance: Extending Kirchoff’s law to the statistics of quanta

Jacob D. Bekenstein and M. Schiffer
Phys. Rev. Lett. 72, 2512 – Published 18 April 1994
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Abstract

An ideal grey body is a macroscopic object with definite temperature which absorbs only a fraction of the radiation incident on it. Assuming that a grey body always emits in a mixed state, and that the radiation density matrix factors into matrices for the various frequency modes, we employ general arguments to derive the complete statistic of grey-body radiance elicited by incident radiation. These depend only on the temperature and the absorptivities for the various frequencies (hence are of universal form), and coincide with the statistics of black-hole radiance first derived a decade and a half ago.

  • Received 29 December 1993

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.72.2512

©1994 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Jacob D. Bekenstein

  • Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Givat Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel

M. Schiffer

  • Theory Division, CERN, CH1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland
  • Instituto de Físicsa, Universidade de São Paulo, 01498-970 São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

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Vol. 72, Iss. 16 — 18 April 1994

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