Winter 2012

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