PHY412A: STATISTICAL MECHANICS

Rules of the Game

1) The responsibility is entirely of the students to make sure that they have read this write-
up carefully and understood the points that will be strictly followed during the course.

2) 100% attendance is mandatory. If a student is absent too often, the student will be deregistered
from the course.

3) Total marks at the end of the course will be given out of 100 marks.
4) Anything below 35 marks (out of 100 marks) will strictly correspond to F grade. Rest of the
grades will be assigned relatively.

5) Homework submissions will account for 25 marks.

6) A lot of HW-problems will be given but all of them will not be meant for submission; some will
just serve as practice problems. Sometimes certain HW-problems will be meant for submission
which will be announced and such HW-problems must be submitted right on the date/time
speci ed. Fully complete and timely submission is mandatory; any non-compliance will
straightaway fetch the defaulter zero marks in the corresponding HW-problem.

7) Mid-semester exam will be of 30 marks.

8) End-semester exam will be of 45 marks.

9) The rst class will be held over Zoom as per the following schedule:

Topic: PHY412A Live

Time: 1000–1100 hrs on Wednesday, 5 January.

(The timing of all the subsequent classes will be decided in the rst class, so everyone’s presence is a
must on Wednesday, 5 January.)

Zoom Class Link

https://iitk-ac-in.zoom.us/j/91590246889?pwd=UDZReTRoMkJKbjdFbGtleTg4S0N3QT09

Meeting ID: 915 9024 6889

Passcode: phy412A

10) Blatant copying, faking attendance, or any other unfair means in any form at any stage of the
course will be very very strictly dealt with and zero-tolerance policy will be adopted in such
cases.

11) Broadly, following will be covered in the course: Review of Thermodynamics, Probability theory,
Random Walk, Brownian motion, Diffusion Equation, idea of Langevin and Fokker–Planck
Equations; Basic principles of Equilibrium Classical Statistical Mechanics, Micro-Canonical,
Canonical and Grand Canonical ensembles; Quantum Statistical Mechanics, Density Matrix,
Ideal Quantum Gases and their properties, Bose–Einstein Condensation, Free Electron gas;
Ising model of Magnetism, Transfer Matrix method, Mean eld theory; Phase Transitions,
CurieWeiss theory, Landau theory, Scaling near a critical point. [Reference Books: Reif, Huang,
Pathria, Ma, Feynman, Kardar, Landau and Lifshitz, Chaudhury and Stauffer, Bhattacharjee and
Banerjee.]
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