Measuring nonequilibrium temperature of forced oscillators

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2003 Feb;67(2 Pt 2):026121. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.67.026121. Epub 2003 Feb 26.

Abstract

The meaning of temperature in nonequilibrium thermodynamics is considered by using a forced harmonic oscillator in a heat bath, where we have two effective temperatures for the position and the momentum, respectively. We propose a concrete model of a thermometer to testify the validity of these different temperatures from the operational point of view. It is found that the measured temperature depends on a specific form of interaction between the system and a thermometer, which means that the zeroth law of thermodynamics cannot be immediately extended to nonequilibrium cases.