Adiabatic

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ædɪəˈbætɪk/
• Rhymes: -ætɪk

Origin

From Ancient Greek ἀδιάβατος (adiabatos, "impassible"), from ἀ (a, "not") + διά (dia, "through") + βατός (batos, "passable"), from βαίνειν (bainein, "to go"). See βαίνω.

Full definition of adiabatic

Adjective

1. (physics, thermodynamics, of a process) That occurs without gain or loss of heat (and thus with no change in entropy, in the quasistatic approximation).
• 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, p. 737:Talk of dynamic compression and adiabatic gradients didn't carry as much weight as the certainty of its conscious intent.
2. (physics, quantum mechanics, of a process) That involves the slow change of the Hamiltonian of a system from its initial value to a final value.
• 1961, Albert Messiah, Quantum Mechanics, Volume II, page 740,In this section we examine the limiting cases when T is very small (sudden change) and very large (adiabatic change).

Antonyms

• (thermodynamics) diabatic
• (quantum mechanics) non-adiabatic

Derived terms

• adiabat
• adiabatically
• subadiabatic
• superadiabatic