STATISTICAL PHYSICS

Statistical Mechanics: microstates & macrostates- classical description in terms of phase space &
quantum description in terms of wave function. Hypothesis of equal a priory probability for
microstates of an isolated system in equilibrium. Interactions between two systems- thermal,
mechanical & diffusive. Statistical definition of temperature, pressure, & entropy & the chemical
potential. Partition function of a system in thermal equilibrium with a heat bath. The law of
equipartition of energy, its limit of validity & application.
Classical Statistics: Maxwell- Boltzmann law. Calculation of thermodynamic quantities for the ideal
monatomic gases.
Quantum Statistics: Gibbs paradox. Identical particles & symmetry requirements. Derivation of MB,
FD & BE statistics as a most probable distributions (micro canonical ensemble), in grand canonical
ensemble. Classical limit of the quantum statistics.
Bose- Einstein Statistics: Application to the radiation- Planks law, Rayleigh- jeans law, Wiens law
as the limiting case, Stefans law. Photons & lattice specific heat of solid- Einsteins & Debyes
theory. Bose- Einstein condensation.
Fermi- Dirac Statistics: Fermi distribution at zero & nonzero temperatures. Fermi energy & its
expression in terms particle density. Degenerate & non degenerate Fermi gas. Electron specific of
metals at low temperature, thermionic emission, Richardson- dushman equation.
Other Topics: fluctuations, electrons in magnetic field, density matrices, landau theorem,
correlation length, diverging correlation length, ising model, Saha ionization formula, and response
function, critical indices, scaling relation, Lagrange undetermined multiplier.