Interacting Einstein solids: sharpness of the

multiplicity function
2 Replies

Reference:DanielV.Schroeder,AnIntroductiontoThermalPhysics,(Addison
Wesley,2000)Problems2.202.21.
The number of microstates in anEinstein solidwith oscillators and energy
quantais

Forlargesystemsathightemperatures,sothat
formula

wehavetheapproximate

If we now have two such solids and allow them to interact, the number of
microstates for thecombined systemfor any given macrostate (that is, a given
divisionofthetotalenergy
betweenthetwosolids)isjusttheproduct
ofthenumbersforthetwoseparatesolids:

Wevealreadyseenthatthemostprobablestateforapairofinteractingsolidsis
the state in which the energy quanta are distributed evenly between the two
systems,sothat
.Ourgoalinthispostistoinvestigatehowlikely
it is that the distribution of energy will deviate significantly from this most
probablestate.
Tomakethingssimpler,welltake
size.Then

sothatbothsolidsarethesame

With heldconstant,theshapeofthiscurveisdeterminedbythe
factor.Ifwepulloutafactorof ,weget

We can get a feel for how the curves shape changes as we increase by
plotting
for several values of . itself ranges from 0 to 1
and
hasamaximumvalueof0.25at
,sowecanscalethegraphto
averticalrangeof0to1byinsertingafactorof4insidetheparentheses.Thatis,
weplot
,asshown:

Thecurvesarefor
(red),
and
(violet).

(blue),

(yellow),

(green)

Theactualwidthofthecurvecanbeapproximatedbythecalculationgivenby
Schroeder in section 2.4. The peak of the curve occurs at
so we can
investigate the behaviour for
and
where
. Schroeder
showsthat becomes,nearthepeak:

whichisaGaussiancurve.Thewidthcanbedefinedasthedistancein between
thepointswherethecurveis ofitsmaximumvalue,whichoccurswhen

sothewidthofthecurveistwicethis,or
.Sincewereassuming
,this
widthisstillalargenumber,butsincethetotalwidthofthegraphis
,the
widthofthepeakasafractionofthetotalwidthofthegraphisaround
,
whichforanymacroscopicvalueof ,isvanishinglysmall.Forexample,if is
ontheorderofAvogadrosnumber,
,andwedrewthegraphsothatthetotal
widthofthegraphfitsonapage10cmwide,thewidthofthecentralpeakis
around
,whichisabout thesizeofahydrogenatom