Physics 35200 Statistical Mechanics
Day/Time: MW 09:00 -10:20 am
Location: KPTC 101
Lecturer: Cheng Chin, cchin@uchicago.edu
Office: GCIS 107
Office Hours: MW 10:30-11:30 am
Grader: Ran Huo, huor@uchicago.edu
Website: http://ultracold.uchicago.edu/phys_winter12
Class outline:
Thermodynamics
Wk 2 01/09 M Laws of thermodynamics
Wk 2 01/11 W Entropy and thermodynamic potentials
Statistical mechanics
Wk 3 01/18 W Statistical distributions
Wk 3 01/20 F Statistical entropy HW1
Wk 4 01/23 M Statistical ensembles
Wk 4 01/25 W Gibbs distributions
Wk 5 01/30 M Non-interacting systems and equibalence of ensembles
Wk 5 02/01 W Interacting systems (I) HW1 due, HW2
Wk 6 02/06 M Interacting systems (II)
Wk 6 02/08 W Fluctuations and correlations (I)
Wk 7 02/13 M Fluctuations and correlations (II)
Wk 7 02/15 W Discussion: Fundamental assumptions in statistical mechanics and thermodynamics HW1 solution, HW2 due, HW3
Quantum Statistical Mechanics and Phase Transitions
Wk 8 02/20 M Fermi and Bose distributions
Wk 8 02/22 W Mean-field theory
Wk 9 02/29 W Class presentations
Max Hutchinson, Asher Berlin, Oleg Lysenko
Wk 9 03/02 F Class presentations HW2 solution, HW3 due, HW4
Kevin Labe, Rufus Boyack, Guillermina Ramirec
Wk 10 03/05 M Phase transitions and criticality
Wk 10 03/07 W Scale invariance and renormalization group HW4 due
Evaluation
Problem sets: 50% Term paper(Due on 3/12)/presentation: 50% (Guidelines)
Textbooks
(required)Statistical Physics (Vol.5), Landau and Lifshitz
(recommended) Thermodynamics, Enrico Fermi