Examination procedure
<p>Written and oral exam.</p>
Examination procedure notes
<p>Written exam in December/January followed by an oral exam.</p>
Prerequisites
Course in Statistical Physics for third-year Physics students.
Syllabus
- Introduction to Thermodynamics: basic concepts, perfect gas, thermodynamic potentials, Maxwell relations
- Applications I: adiabatic demagnetization, thermal radiation, fluids
- Applications II: real gases, phase transitions in real gases, Maxwell construction
- Introduction to Statistical Mechanics: Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, microcanonical ensemble, Sackur-Tetrode formula, Canonical and Grancanonical ensembles, Gibbs paradox, mixing entropy
- Quantum Statistics: Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac distributions, black-body radiation
- Theory of Phase Transitions I: Ising model, Curie-Weiss model
- Theory of Phase Transitions II: Landau Theory, Spontaneous symmetry breaking
- Theory of Phase Transitions III: Advanced topics
Bibliographical references
Kerson Huang, Statistical Mechanics, second edition
Derek Frank Lawden, Principles of Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics
Luca Peliti, Statistical Mechanics in a Nutshell, second edition