On the microscopic nature of dissipative effects in special relativistic kinetic theory

Abstract

A microscopic formulation of the definition of both the heat flux and the viscous stress tensor is proposed in the framework of kinetic theory for relativistic gases emphasizing on the physical nature of such fluxes. A Lorentz transformation is introduced as the link be tween the laboratory and local comoving frames and thus between molecular and chaotic velocities. With such transformation, the dissipative effects can be identified as the aver ages of the chaotic kinetic energy and the momentum flux out of equilibrium, respectively. Within this framework, a kinetic foundation of the ensuing transport equations for the relativistic gas is achieved. To our knowledge, this result is completely novel.