Syllabus:

1.   Thermodynamics: fundamental laws, conditions for equilibrium and stability

2.   Basic principle of statistical mechanics: ensembles, ergodicity, microscopic rationalization of thermodynamics

3.   Statistical mechanics of simple systems: ideal gases and solutions, non-interacting bosons and fermions, chemical equilibria

4.   Phase transitions and critical phenomena: Ising model, lattice gas, spontaneous symmetry breaking, mean field theory, renormalization group theory

5.   Numerical simulations of complex systems: Monte Carlo importance sampling, detailed balance, reference systems and umbrella sampling

6.   Statistical mechanics of classical systems: velocity distributions; structure and fluctuations of liquids, polymers, and membranes

7.   Statistical dynamics: time correlation functions, diffusion, kinetics, fluctuation-dissipation theorem

Prerequisite:

Students should have completed an undergraduate course in physical chemistry.

Textbook:

Lectures will follow the general organization of Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics by Chandler, with further details and examples drawn from Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics by Reif.  These and other, more specialized texts will be placed on 2 hour reserve at the Chemistry Library.

Homework and Exams:   

Graded course work will consist of problem sets (approximately one per week, each due in class on Thursday of the following week), two midterm exams (covering the first four section of the syllabus), and a comprehensive final exam.  The collection of problem sets will contribute to the final grade with a weight of 1.5 exams.  During the fifth section, students will modify and compose simple computer programs to explore a model of phase transitions.  Access to a computer with appropriate software (editors and compilers) is therefore mandatory.  Facilities will be made available upon request to students lacking these resources.

Homework #1       Solution #1

Homework #2       Solution #2

Homework #3       Solution #3

Homework #4      

Homework #5        Solution #5

Homework #6        Solution #6

Homework #7        Ising_model in C     Input.c 

Homework #8

Please send comments, suggestions and corrections to liujian@uclink.berkeley.edu