Negative temperature - Wikipedia
Certain systems can achieve negative thermodynamic temperature; that is, their temperature can be expressed as a negative quantity on the Kelvin or Rankine scales. This should be distinguished from temperatures expressed as negative numbers on non-thermodynamic Celsius or Fahrenheit scales, which are nevertheless higher than absolute zero. A system with a truly negative temperature on the Kelvin scale is hotter than any system with a positive temperature. If a negative-temperature system and a positive-temperature system come in contact, heat will flow from the negative- to the positive-temperature system.[1][2] A standard example of such a system is population inversion in laser physics. Thermodynamic systems with unbounded phase space cannot achieve negative temperatures: adding heat always increases their entropy. The possibility of a decrease in entropy as energy increases requires the system to "saturate" in entropy. This is only possible if the number of high energy states is lim
Negative temperature - Wikipedia Jump to content From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article may be too technical for most readers to understand . Please help improve it to make it understandable to non-experts , without removing the technical details. ( June 2026 ) ( Learn how and when to remove this message ) Physical systems hotter than any other SI temperature/coldness conversion scale: Temperatures on the Kelvin scale are shown in blue (Celsius scale in green, Fahrenheit scale in red), coldness values in gigabyte per nanojoule are shown in black. Infinite temperature (coldness zero
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