Physics 219: Statistical Mechanics
Tue-Thu 9:30 – 10:45am, Phelps 3523
Boris Shraiman, KITP, Kohn Hall rm. 2317
shraiman@kitp.ucsb.edu
Office hours: Tue 2-4pm
Teaching Assistant: Dillon Cislo (djcislo@umail.ucsb.edu) Broida rm 1015
Dillon’s office hours: Tue & Thu 3:00-4:30pm (location: Broida rm 1015)
Syllabus:
- Laws of thermodynamics. Carnot cycle.
- Entropy. Intensive and extensive variables. Thermodynamics potentials. Legendre transform.
- Phase space. Liouville theorem. Ergodic hypothesis. Canonical ensemble.
- Partition function and free energy. Perfect gas. Boltzman and Maxwell distributions. Max entropy and equipartition.
- Microcanonical and grand canonical ensembles. Thermodynamic average and fluctuations.
- Quantum statistical mechanics. Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac distributions
- Specific heat of ideal gas with internal and rotational degrees of freedom.
- Imperfect gas. Van der Waals equation. Phase equilibrium.
- Virial coefficients and Mayer cluster expansion. Two particle distribution function.
- Phonons and specific heat of crystals. Black body radiation.
- Degenerate Bose gas.
- Degenerate Fermi gas.
- Fluctuations and correlations. Fluctuation-dissipation theorem.
- Non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. Langevin and Fokker-Planck equations.
- Boltzmann equation.
Recommended texts:
McQuarrie, “Statistical Mechanics” ***
Landau and Lifshitz, “Statistical Physics” **
S-K Ma, “Statistical Mechanics” **
Feynman, "Statistical Mechanics" *
Fermi, “Thermodynamics” *
Expect: 9 homework sets + take home final.
Grade = 0.67 Homework + 0.33 Final
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS: