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 assigned below, 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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Homework is due at the beginning of class each Tuesday. Homework late by < 48 hours, 1/2 credit. Homework late by > 48 hours, no credit.
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=> The “midterm” exams and final exam will be at 7:00 p.m. on the designated dates: Thursday, October 3, in Room 213 (MPHY); Thursday, November 7, in Room 204 (MPHY); Thursday, December 5, in Room 204 (MPHY). <=
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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.
HOMEWORK
The problem numbers given below are equally valid for the 3rd and 4th editions of the textbook. The problem statements are also exactly the same (except for the correction of one extremely trivial typographical error), and the relevant equation numbers are also exactly the same.
There are very minor typos in a few of the homework problems from the quoted textbooks.
August 27: Set 1 - HW1.pdf
September 5 [Thursday]: Set 2 - HW2.pdf
September 10: Set 3 - HW3.pdf
September 17: Set 4 - P 3.9, P 3.7, P 3.6, P3.15, P 3.16
September 24: Set 5 - P 3.19, P 3.20, P 3.21 (a) classical only plus P 3.22 (nonrelativistic), P 10.19, P 3.25
October 1: Set 6 - HW6.pdf
October 10 [Thursday]: Set 7 - P 3.35 (a), P 3.43
October 15: Set 8 - HW8.pdf
October 22: Set 9 - P 4.1, P 4.7, P 3.29 first part, P 3.29 second part, M10-19, M10-19.pdf , M10-19 background.pdf
October 29: Set 10 - P 8.4 (a) only, P 8.6, P 8.8, P 8.13, M10-21 first part (recursion relation only), M10-21.pdf
[If you want to challenge yourself, you can do the second and third parts of problem M 10-21 for fun. This involves an excursion into the properties of the zeta function, as at http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RiemannZetaFunction.html and https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1180573439 , where you can calculate things like zeta(-3/2). See problem P 7.6, Eq. (7.1.38), and Appendices D and B.)
November 5: Set 11 - P 8.4 (b), P 8.4 (c), P 7.5 (a), P7.5 (b), P 7.13 first paragraph only
November 12: Set 12 - P 6.1 first sentence only, P 6.7, P 6.10, P 7.25, P 7.26
November 19: Set 13 - P 9.8, P 11.1 (a) only, P 7.33, P 7.34, P 7.35
November 26: Set 14 - P 12.1, P 11.8 (counts as 2 problems), Goodstein 5.12, Goodstein 6.3 (b) & 6.4 (counts as 1 problem), P 9.1, P 9.9
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Old exams, just to provide a rough idea of format etc. (NOT practice exams):
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