Instructor: Prof. Paulo Bedaque
                 3147 Physical Sciences Complex
Grader: TBA
Lecture times/place: Thuesdays & Thursdays, 9:30am to 10:45am on room 1201 in the (old) Physics building
Office hours: TBA
Textbook(s): We will not follow closely any textbook. A book that is not too different from the lectures is "Statistical Mechanics" by Pathria.
 
Interesting links

Accessible, short discussion of ergodic theory (somewhat dated).
Charles Bennett on the Maxwell's demon.

Lecture Notes (beware: mostly for my own private use, your mileage may vary)

Foundations
Thermodynamics
Canonical Ensemble
Canonical Ensemble
Quantum Gases
Approximation Methods
Phase Transitions




Homeworks

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Tentative Syllabus:

Introduction
     Microcopic and macroscopic variables
     Ensembles in phase space, ergodic hypothesis, microcanonical ensemble
Thermodynamics
    The fundamental problem of thermodynamics, entropy
    Energy minimum principle
    Thermodynamics processes and engines
Other ensembles
    Canonical ensemble, fluctuations of energy, equivalence to microcanonical ensembe, free energy
    Grand canonical ensemble, fluctuations of particle number , equivalence to microcanonical ensembe, Gibbs potential
    Other thermodynamical potentials
Quantum statistical mechanics
    Density matrices and mixed states
Quantum gases
    Ideal Bose gas, boson condensation; Black body radiation
    Ideal Fermi gas, Fermi pressure and White dwarfs, paramagnetism and diamagnetism
Phase transitions
    First order phase transition, Maxwell construction
    Second order phase transitions; Guinsburg-Landau; spontaneous symmetry breaking, long range correlations, Landau-Wilson ideology, universality