Advanced Thermal & Statistical Physics

10 units · Undergraduate

Spring: 10 units This advanced elective course is designed to provide a more rigorous foundation to the material covered in 33-341 . It begins with a systematic development of formal probability theory, with emphasis on generating functions, probability density functions and asymptotic approximations. Examples are taken from games of chance, geometric probabilities and radioactive decay. The connections between the ensembles of statistical mechanics (microcanonical, canonical and grand canonical) with the various thermodynamic potentials is developed for single component and multicomponent systems. Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics are reviewed. These principles are then applied to topics such as electronic specific heats, chemical reactions, phase transitions, statistical field theory and mean field theories, binary phase diagrams, paramagnetism, ferromagnetism, defects, semiconductors and fluctuation phenomena. Prerequisite: 33-341