About Defining the Referent Thermal Scale Points

The absolute temperature T has a recognized physical meaning in equilibrium thermodynamics. The scale realized by the closely related Lagrange coefficient "b" usually figures as an auxiliary scale. In this article, the scale spanned by "b" is a proper intensive thermal quantity for equilibrium and, suitably generalized, for stationary non-equilibrium state description. The coefficient "b" measures a relative deviation of a system state from the state of uniform distribution function. The cause of deviation is coupling to environment, which is realized as a net energy transfer and which ceases in the "b" = 0 state. A canonical ensemble of two level atoms coupled to electromagnetic quasi-continuum is considered as an example. The proposed and the usual interpretations of "b" are applied to stationary states of the same system, in which case the notion of the generalized absolute temperature is introduced. The generalized absolute temperature is a measure of a deviation of a system state from a state of infinitely intense external influence.