Statistical Mechanics (SM)
personCristian Micheletti
Program
- Fundamental notions:
- microcanonical, canonical and grandcanonical ensembles (derived from maximum entropy principles).
- Boltzmann, Bose and Fermi statistics.
- Quantum statistical mechanics.
- Properties of the free energy and phase transitions.
- The Ising model.
- Transfer matrix in 1D + field etc..
- Landau argument; ad hoc methods to solve the 1D system.
- The transfer matrix: a general method to solve 1D and 2D striped systems.
- Weiss approach.
- Critical exponents.
- Variational principles and mean field.
- Infinite range model.
- Scaling relations, Widom hypothesis, finite size scaling.
- Selected topics in out of equilibrium statistical mechanics.
Evaluation
The successful and proficient attendance of the course will be evaluated through an oral exam.
References
- K. Huang, Statistical Mechanics, any edition
- J. Yeomans, Statistical Mechanics of Phase transitions
- N. Goldenfeld, Lectures On Phase Transitions And The Renormalization Group
- G. Parisi, Statistical field theory