Università Roma Tre

CONTENTS OF THE LECTURES: the numbers in round brackets refer to the chapter and section of the textbook adopted.
Kinetic theory of gases. Boltzmann equation and H theorem. (1, Par.2.1,2.2,2.3,2.4)
Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. (1, Par. 2.5)
Phase space and Liouville theorem. (1, Par. 3.1,3.2)
Gibbs ensembles. Micro canonical ensemble. Definition of entropy. (1, Par. 3.3,3.4)
The ideal gas in the micro canonical ensemble. (1, Par. 3.6)
The equipartition theorem. (1, Par. 3.5)
The canonical ensemble. (1, Par.4.1).
The partition function and the free energy. Fluctuations of energy in the canonical ensemble. (1 Par. 4.4)
The grand canonical ensemble. The grand potential. The ideal gas in the grand canonical ensemble. (1 Par. 4.3).
Fluctuations of the particle number. (1 Par. 4.4)
Classical theory of the linear response and fluctuation-dissipation theorem. (1, Par. 8.4).
Einstein and Langevin theories of the Brownian motion. (Par. 1 par. 11.1,11.2).
Johnson-Nyqvist theory of thermal noise. (1 Par. 11.3).
Quantum statistical mechanics and the density matrix. (1, Par. 6.2,6.3,6.4)
Fermi-Dirac and Bose-einstein quantum statistics. ( 1, Par. 7.1)
The Fermi gas. The Sommerfeld expansion and the electron specific heat. (1, Par. 7.2)
The Bose gas. The Bose-Einstein condensation. (1, Par. 7.3)
Quantum theory of black-body radiation. (1, Par. 7.5)


Web page with additional material about the lecture course

https://sites.google.com/a/personale.uniroma3.it/robertoraimondi/home/teaching/elementi

Suggested textbook:
1) C. Di Castro and R. Raimondi, Statistical Mechanics and Applications in Condensed Matter, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Further reading:
2) K. Huang, Meccanica Statistica, Zanichelli, 1997.
3) L. Peliti, Appunti di Meccanica Statistica, Bollati Boringhieri, 2003.
4) Joel L. Lebowitz, Statistical mechanics: A selective review of two central issues, Reviews of Modern Physics, 71, S346 (1999).