Statistical Physics(D)
STATISTICAL PHYSICS (D)
Part IB Quantum Mechanics and “Multiparticle Systems” from Part II Principles of Quantum Mechanics are essential.
Fundamentals of statistical mechanics
- Microcanonical ensemble. Entropy, temperature and pressure. Laws of thermodynamics. Example of paramagnetism. Boltzmann distribution and canonical ensemble. Partition function. Free energy. Specific heats. Chemical Potential. Grand Canonical Ensemble. [5]
Classical gases
- Density of states and the classical limit. Ideal gas. Maxwell distribution. Equipartition of energy. Diatomic gas. Interacting gases. Virial expansion. Van der Waal’s equation of state. Basic kinetic theory. [3]
Quantum gases
- Density of states. Planck distribution and black body radiation. Debye model of phonons in solids. Bose-Einstein distribution. Ideal Bose gas and Bose-Einstein condensation. Fermi-Dirac distribution. Ideal Fermi gas. Pauli paramagnetism. [8]
Thermodynamics
- Thermodynamic temperature scale. Heat and work. Carnot cycle. Applications of laws of thermodynamics. Thermodynamic potentials. Maxwell relations. [4]
Phase transitions
- Liquid-gas transitions. Critical point and critical exponents. Ising model. Mean field theory. First and second order phase transitions. Symmetries and order parameters. [4]
Appropriate books
- F. Mandl Statistical Physics. Wiley 1988
- R.K. Pathria Statistical Mechanics, 2nd ed.. Butterworth-Heinemann 1996
- L.D. Landau and E.M. Lifshitz Statistical Physics, Part 1 (Course of Theoretical Physics volume 5). Butterworth-Heinemann 1996
- F. Reif Fundamentals of Thermal and Statistical Physics. McGraw-Hill 1965
- A.B. Pippard Elements of Classical Thermodynamics. Cambridge University Press, 1957
- K. Huang Introduction to Statistical Physics. Taylor and Francis 2001
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