Blackbody heat capacity at constant pressure

Abstract

At first glance, the title of this work seems to be improper. And the reason is well known. Since blackbody pressure depends only on temperature, one cannot take the derivative of the thermodynamic quantities with respect to one of them, keeping the other constant. That is, the heat capacity at constant pressure, CP, as well as, the coefficient of thermal expansion, α, and the isothermal compressibility, κT, are ill-defined quantities. This work will show that when the perfect conducting nature of the walls of a blackbody cavity is taken into account, CP, α and κT are in fact well defined, and they are related by the usual thermodynamic relations, as expected. Two geometries will be considered, namely, a spherical shell and a cubic box. It will be shown that CP, α and κT depend very much on the geometry of the cavity. Issues regarding thermodynamic stability will be addressed, revealing that they also depend on the cavity’s geometry. It is argued that these findings may be amenable to experimental verification.