Details of PH3201 (Spring 2020)

Level: 3 Type: Theory Credits: 4.0

Course CodeCourse NameInstructor(s)
PH3201 Basic Statistical Mechanics Narayan Banerjee

Syllabus
Connection between statistics and thermodynamics; Concept of microstates phase space and its connection to Entropy; Classical Ideal Gas and the Maxwell Boltzmann Distribution, Entropy of mixing and Gibbs Paradox;

Liouvilles Theorem, Microcanonical Ensemble, Canonical Ensemble and Partition Function calculation for various systems; Energy fluctuations in the Canonical Ensemble; Grand Canonical Ensemble; Number Density and Energy Fluctuations in the Grand Canonical ensemble;

Quantum Statistics and calculation of the Density matrix for various systems; Indistinguishability of Particles, Symmetric and Anti-Symmetric wave functions and calculation of the the Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac Distribution for a quantum Ideal Gas; Thermodynamic behaviour of an Ideal Bose Gas, Black-Body radiation and other applications of Bose-Einstein statistics; Thermodynamic behaviour of an ideal Fermi gas and various applications of Fermi-Dirac statistics such as Pauli paramagnetism and calculation of Chandasekhar limit in White Dwarf stars; Cluster expansion techniques for interacting systems;

Introduction to basic ideas of phase transitions via Ising model and Van der Waals gas, exact solution of the Ising model in 1D;

Boltzmanns Equation and the H-Theorem; Description of Einstein-Smoluchowski theory of Brownian motion as a stochastic process; Basic ideas behind the Fokker-Planck and Master equations with simple examples.

Prerequisite
Thermal Physics (pre-major course) as well as Physics IV (pre-major course)

References

  1. Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics, Reif, F.

  2. Statistical Physics of Particles, Kardar, M.

  3. Statistical Mechanics, Pathria, R. K.

  4. Statistical mechanics, Huang, Kerson

Course Credit Options

Sl. No.ProgrammeSemester NoCourse Choice
1 IP 2 Core
2 IP 4 Not Allowed
3 IP 6 Not Allowed
4 MR 2 Not Allowed
5 MR 4 Not Allowed
6 MS 6 Core
7 RS 1 Elective
8 RS 2 Elective