Abstract:
We study the differential-geometric structure of the space of thermodynamic
states in equilibrium thermodynamics. We demonstrate that this space is
a foliation of codimension two and find variables in which the foliation fibers
are flat. We show that we can introduce a symplectic structure on this
space: the external derivative of the $1$-form of the heat source, which
has the form of the skew-symmetric product $dT\wedge dS$ in the found
variables. The entropy $S$ then plays the role of the Lagrange function
(or Hamiltonian) in mechanics, completely determining the thermodynamic system.
Keywords:symplectic structure, space of states, dynamical principle.