Spring 2023 – Syllabus / Course Information

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Instructor: Dr Luca Bombelli E-mail: <bombelli at olemiss.edu>; Phone: (662) 915-5319 Fax: (662) 915-5045; Website: relativity.phy.olemiss.edu/~luca Office hours: WF 11:00–11:40 am in Lewis 108A, or by appointment Class Location and Time: MWF 10:00–10:50 am, Lewis 109 Required Textbook: Malcolm P. Kennett, Essential Statistical Physics, Cambridge UP 2020, ISBN 9781108480789 Other Useful Books: See the list here.

Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the same work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously. — D L Goodstein, States of Matter, 1975

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Course Description: This is a one-semester introduction to the fundamentals of statistical mechanics for graduate students in physics and related disciplines. We begin with a quick review of thermodynamics and an overview of general concepts of probability and statistics. The main part of the course covers classical and quantum equilibrium statistical mechanics and its application to the main examples of interest in physics, such as ideal gases of bosons (including photons and phonons in solids), fermions (including a simple model for electrons in metals), and paramagnetic and ferromagnetic materials. Special topics to be covered will include phase transitions, with some numerical Monte Carlo calculations. If there is enough time, the last part of the course may be devoted to an introduction to fluctuations in statistical mechanics and/or simple non-equilibrium systems.

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Homework: Assignments will be given approximately once a week. Students should submit their work on paper, either in class or in my tutoring room mailbox by the date due at 5:00 pm. Homework must include explanations in words of the approach used by the student and will be graded both for correctness of the technical content and for completeness and clarity of the explanation. Solutions will be posted on this website. Tests: There will be three hour-long tests containing short conceptual questions and simple calculations, each on the material covered in the previous third of the course. I will expect you to be familiar with all of the material covered in the lectures and assignments. This means knowing the definitions and physical meaning of the terms and concepts discussed (even if not explicitly written down in the lecture notes) and being able to provide short derivations and solve short problems based on the same material. You do not need to remember all the equations, but you should know the general statistical mechanics relationships and the Hamiltonians used as starting points for the derivations. You are not responsible for knowing the material in the suggested references that we did not cover in class, but reading those is likely to help you. Term Project: Each student will pick a topic from this list, and give a presentation on it at the end of the course following these guidelines.

Evaluation Grading Scheme Homework ............ 20% Test 1 .............. 20% Test 2 .............. 20% Test 3 .............. 10% Presentation ........ 30% (may change if a graded computational component is added to the course) Grading Scale 87%-100% ......... A 75%-86% .......... B 60%-74% .......... C 40%-59% .......... D less than 40% .... F