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Statistical Mechanics

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Gokul Krish
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29 views

Statistical Mechanics

Uploaded by

Gokul Krish
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Statistical mechanics - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Statistical_mechanics

knowledge about that system.[2]

Thermodynamic ensembles[1]

Microcanonical Canonical Grand canonical

Fixed variables

Canonical partition function Grand partition function


Number of microstates
Microscopic features

Boltzmann entropy Helmholtz free energy Grand potential


Macroscopic function

Calculation methods

Once the characteristic state function for an ensemble has been calculated for a given system, that
system is 'solved' (macroscopic observables can be extracted from the characteristic state function).
Calculating the characteristic state function of a thermodynamic ensemble is not necessarily a simple
task, however, since it involves considering every possible state of the system. While some
hypothetical systems have been exactly solved, the most general (and realistic) case is too complex for
an exact solution. Various approaches exist to approximate the true ensemble and allow calculation of
average quantities.

Exact

There are some cases which allow exact solutions.

For very small microscopic systems, the ensembles can be directly computed by simply
enumerating over all possible states of the system (using exact diagonalization in quantum
mechanics, or integral over all phase space in classical mechanics).
Some large systems consist of many separable microscopic systems, and each of the
subsystems can be analysed independently. Notably, idealized gases of non-interacting particles
have this property, allowing exact derivations of Maxwell–Boltzmann statistics, Fermi–Dirac
statistics, and Bose–Einstein statistics.[2]
A few large systems with interaction have been solved. By the use of subtle mathematical
techniques, exact solutions have been found for a few toy models.[9] Some examples include the
Bethe ansatz, square-lattice Ising model in zero field, hard hexagon model.

Monte Carlo

One approximate approach that is particularly well suited to computers is the Monte Carlo method,
which examines just a few of the possible states of the system, with the states chosen randomly (with a
fair weight). As long as these states form a representative sample of the whole set of states of the
system, the approximate characteristic function is obtained. As more and more random samples are
included, the errors are reduced to an arbitrarily low level.

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