Statistical and Solid State Physics

Basic Principles, Canonical and Grand Canonical ensembles : Concept of statistical distribution, phase space, density of states ,Liouville's theorem, systems and ensemble, entropy in statistical mechanics, Connection between thermodynamic and statistical quantities, micro canonical ensemble, equation of state, specific heat and entropy of a perfect gas using microcanonical ensemble.

Canonical ensemble, thermodynamic functions for the canonical ensemble, calculation of mean value, energy fluctuation in a gas, grand canonical ensemble, thermodynamic functions for the grand canonical ensemble, density fluctuations.

Partition functions and properties, partition function for an ideal gas and calculation of thermodynamic quantities, Gibbs Paradox, validity of classical approximation, determination of translational, rotational and vibration contributions to the partition function of an ideal diatomic gas. Specific heat of a diatomic gas, ortho and para hydrogen.

Identical particles and symmetry requirement, difficulties with Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics, quantum distribution functions, Bose Einstein and Fermi-Dirac statistics and Planck's formula, Bose Einstein condensation, liquid He4 as a Boson system, quantization of harmonic oscillator and creation and annihilation of phonon operators, quantization of fermion operators.

Fermi-Dirac distribution function, density of states, temperature dependence of Fermi energy, specific heat, use of Fermi-Dirac statistics in the calculation of thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity, Drude theory of light, absorption in metals. 

Bloch theorem, Kroning Penny model, effective mass of electrons, Wigner-Seitz approximation, NFE model, tight binding method and calculation of density for a band in simple cubic lattice, pseudo potential method.