Phase transitions at high energy vindicate negative microcanonical temperature
Phase transitions at high energy vindicate negative microcanonical temperature
The notion of negative absolute temperature emerges naturally from Boltzmann's definition of ``surface'' microcanonical entropy in isolated systems with a bounded energy density. Recently, the well-posedness of such construct has been challenged, on account that only the Gibbs ``volume'' entropy---and the strictly positive temperature thereof---would give rise to a consistent …