PHYS 813: Quantum Statistical Mechanics
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Course Topics
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This is the second course in a sequence (PHYS 616 + PHYS 813) aimed to introduce physics graduate students to basic concepts and tools of statistical physics. Statistical physics is difficult to teach and learn due to:
- students typically have had little experience making the connection between microscopic and macroscopic phenomena,
- a deep understanding of the probability theory is important,
- the solution of a single equation or a set of equations such as Newton laws, Maxwell equations, or Schrodinger equation is not central to statistical physics, so that there are no standard procedures that work for a large class of problems and many calculations are unfamiliar to students,
- there are few exactly solvable problems.
Thus, the course will focus
with application to
areas of relevance to research in DPA, such as magnetism, condensed
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- proper and improper mixed states in quantum mechanics and the density operator,
- entanglement and decoherence in quantum mechanics,
- equilibrium partition function for noninteracting bosons and fermions,
- electrons in solids,
- stellar astrophysics,
- Bose-Einstein condensation in cold atomic gases,
- phase transitions and critical phenomena (with emphasis on magnetic systems),
- mean field theory vs. renormalization group methods,
- quantum phase transitions,
- elements of nonequilibrium statistical physics: Boltzmann equation, Kubo formula and quantum master equations.
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News
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Lecture in Progress
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- Lecture 2: Density operator formalism for proper and improper mixed quantum states.
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