Physics 607,
Statistical Mechanics
S = k log W on tombstone of Ludwig Boltzmann in Vienna (photographer: Roland E. Allen)
Offfice: Room M213 Mitchell Institute Building
Office hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday 3:00-4:00 p.m., or by appointment.
Textbook: Statistical Mechanics, 4th edition, by R. K. Pathria and P. D. Beale.
The course will be organized such that it is equally acceptable to use the 3rd or 4th edition.
For example, for the homework, the problem numbers, problem statements, and relevant equation numbers are equally valid for the 3rd and 4th editions of the textbook.
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Evaluation:
Homework 35%
2 “midterm” exams 40%
final exam (comprehensive) 25%
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=> The “midterm” exams and final exam will be in Room 213 (MPHY), at 7:00 p.m. on the designated dates: Thursday, October 3; Thursday, November 7; Thursday, December 5. <=
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Some topics in astrophysics will be amplified compared to the textbook's treatments, with short and simple treatments of neutron stars and white dwarfs (including the Chandrasekhar limit), stellar pulsation, the Saha ionization equation, and reactions and phase transitions in cosmology. There will be other topics not in the textbook, including (i) review of some techniques in thermodynamics (from Herbert B. Callen, Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatistics, 2nd Edition ), (ii) basics of the BCS theory of superconductivity (Linda E. Reichl, A Modern Course in Statistical Physics, 4th edition, pp. 224-231), (iii) the Rayleigh-Bénard instability as an example of a nonequilibrium phase transition (Reichl, pp. 378-385), (iv) a brief consideration of deterministic chaos, and (v) a brief discussion of black hole thermodynamics and related topics.