A spinning ideal gas in a cylinder with a smooth surface is shown to have unusual properties. First, under compression parallel to the axis of rotation, the spinning gas exhibits reduced compressibility because energy can be stored in the rotation. Second, the spinning breaks the symmetry under which partial pressures of a mixture of gases simply add proportional to the constituent number densities. Thus, remarkably, in a mixture of spinning gases, an inverse problem can be formulated such that the gas constituents can be determined through external measurements only.

• Received 14 December 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.150604