TITLE:
The Faraday Isolator, Detailed Balance and the Second Law
AUTHORS:
George S. Levy
KEYWORDS:
Faraday Isolator, Detailed Balance, Second Law, Non-Maxwellian, Entropy, H-Theorem, Statistical Mechanics, Perpetual Motion Machine, Statistical Symmetry, Indistinguishability
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics,
Vol.5 No.4,
April
30,
2017
ABSTRACT: A Faraday isolator is shown to develop a temperature difference between its input and output, but still complies with the second law when all the heat carriers, in this case, photons are homogeneous and indistinguishable. This result is a consequence of the H-theorem which assumes homogeneity and indistinguishability of particles. However, when a thermal feedback path is added, in which heat carriers have physical properties different from the photons in the isolator, then a heterogeneous system is formed not covered by the H-theorem, and the second law is violated.