Perfect fluids

Next: The conservation equations Up: The energy- momentum tensor Previous: Conservation of particles

Finally we come to the type of fluid which will be of most interest to us. A perfect fluid  in Special Relativity is defined to be a fluid that has no heat conduction in the MCRF. It is the generalization of the ideal gas in ordinary thermodynamics. In the MCRF  the components of are

It is easy to show that in a general frame we have [ Assignment 4 ]:

This is the energy- momentum tensor of a perfect fluid .