Physics 35200 Statistical Mechanics
Day/Time: MW 10:30 am-11:50 am
Location: KPTC 105
Lecturer: Cheng Chin
Office: GCIS 107
Office Hours: WF 4-5 pm
Email: cchin@uchicago.edu
Website: http://ultracold.uchicago.edu/phys_courses
Class outline:
Thermodynamics
Wk 1 01/04 M 10:30~11:50 Laws of thermodynamics
Wk 1 01/06 W 10:30~11:50 Energy and Clausius’s entropy
Wk 2 01/11 M 10:30~11:50 Thermodynamic potentials
Statistical mechanics
Wk 2 01/13 W 10:30~11:50 Statistical distribution and statistical matrix, hw1, solution1
Wk 3 01/18 M 10:30~11:50 No Class
Wk 3 01/20 W 10:30~11:50 Statistical entropy
Wk 4 01/25 M 10:30~11:50 Discussion: Other interpretations of entropy
Wk 4 01/27 W 10:30~11:50 Statistical ensembles, hw1 due, hw2, solution2
Wk 5 02/01 M 10:30~11:50 Gibbs distribution
Wk 5 02/03 W 10:30~11:50 Non-interacting particles
Wk 6 02/08 M 10:30~11:50 Ising model and interactin gas
Wk 6 02/10 W 10:30~11:50 Virial expansion, hw2 due, hw3, solution3
Wk 7 02/15 M 10:30~11:50 Fluctuations
Wk 7 02/17 W 10:30~11:50 Fluctuation-dissipation theorem
Presentations
Wk 8 02/22 M 10:30~12:00 Presentation I:
Boltzmann Equation and H theorem (Samuel Meehan)
Statistical Mechanical Derivation of Ginzburg-Landau Theory (Jake Ellowitz)
Fluctuation Theorems - Fluctuation Dissipation, Jarzynski Equality and Crooks Fluctuation Theorem (Mikhail Solon)
Wk 8 02/24 W 10:30~12:00 Presentation II, hw3 due, hw4
Stochastic Cooling (Valkovich Aleksandr)
Granular gas and Maxwell's Demon (Marc Miskin)
Pomeranchuk effect (Gustavo Alba)
Quantum systems
Wk 9 03/01 M 10:30~11:50 Bose and Fermi gases (i)
Wk 9 03/03 W 10:30~11:50 Bose and Fermi gases (ii)
Wk 10 03/08 M 10:30~11:50 Mean-field theory
Wk 10 03/10 W 10:30~11:50 Scale invarance and renormalization, hw4 due, hw5
Presentation Topics
Joule-Thompson effect in classical and quantum gases
Thermalization of a finite isolated system?
Empirical determination of equation of state
Cooling techniques in low temperature physics experiments
Virial expansion
Entropy in informational statistics
Paradoxes in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics
Fluctuation-dissipation theorem
Quantum phase transition modeling
Paradoxes in thermodynamics
2D quantum systems
Non-equilibrium thermodynamics
Evaluation
Problem sets: 50% Presentation/term paper: 50%
Extra credits (0.5~5%): identify errors in the textbooks
Textbooks
(recommended) thermodynamics, Enrico Fermi