Homework Set-I for PHY-305A: Physics of the Universe

Date: 29nd August, 2017

Instructor: Kaushik Bhattacharya1
Office: FB-387, Phone: 7306

1. Suppose you have a solid spherical shell of radius R and total mass M . The spherical shell
has uniform mass density ρ. What is the gravitational binding-energy or gravitational
self-energy of this shell.

(a) To do this problem you may think that the solid shell is made up of thin spherical
shells whose width is dr. This means that each thin shell is enclosed within two
spheres of radius r and r + dr.
(b) Find out the gravitational energy required to remove the outermost thin shell from
its position to infinity.
(c) Once the outermost shell is out, do it for the next shell and then on and on until
no matter is there in the shell. All the matter has been taken to infinity. The total
gravitational energy will require an integration.
(d) The result gives you the energy released if a gravitating object (in this case a solid
spherical shell) becomes completely broken. That result is a positive number. On
the other hand the negative of the above number gives you the binding-energy of
the gravitating system, which is intrinsically negative. In this case verify that the
result is
3GM 2
U =− .
5R
2. Suppose there is a gravitating system of particles. There are N particles in the system,
where the ith particle has mass mi and its position vector with respect to the origin of
the coordinate system is ri = (xi , yi , zi ). You can always define a quantity I as:
N N
mi ri2 ,
X X
I= m i ri · ri =
i=1 i=1

where although this I looks similar to the moment of inertia but there are differences.
1 dI
(a) From the above information calculate G = 2 dt
. The quantity G is often called the
virial. Show that
N
X
G= mi ṙi · ri .
i=1

(b) Differentiate the last expression again and show

N
dG X
= 2T + mi r̈i · ri , (1)
dt i=1

PN 1 2
where T = i=1 2 mi ṙi , is the total kinetic energy of the N particle system.
1
Email: kaushikb@iitk.ac.in

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(c) The force on the ith particle due to the jth particle is given as mi r̈i = − N
P
j ,j6=i Fij
where Fij is the gravitational interaction felt by the ith particle due to the jth
particle. In particular we have,
N
X Gmi mj
mi r̈i = − (r − rj ) .
3 i
j ,j6=i |ri − rj |
PN PN
From the above information calculate, i=1 mi r̈i · ri + j=1 mj r̈j · rj and using this
expression show that one can write
N
X 1 X Gmi mj
mi r̈i · ri = − ,
i=1 2 i,j ,j6=i |ri − rj |

(d) Now the gravitational potential on the ith particle due all the other particles is
N
X Gmj
Φi = − .
j ,j6=i |ri − rj |

This implies the gravitational potential energy of the ith particle is Ui = mi Φi . One
can write the total potential energy of the system as
 
N N N
X 1X X Gmj 
U= Ui =  −mi .
i=1 2 i=1 j ,j6=i |ri − rj |

Can you justify the presence of the factor 1/2 in the above equation? From the
above equation you can now write
N
X
mi r̈i · ri = U .
i=1

(e) Consequently, now you have from Eq. (1),

dG
= 2T + U , (2)
dt
where T is the total kinetic energy of the N particle system and U is the total
potential energy of the N particle system. Now suppose we want to take time
average of the above equation and write the above equation as
* +
dG
= 2hT i + hU i , (3)
dt
where the curly brackets specify averages. Here
* + !
dG 1Zτ dG
= dt ,
dt τ 0 dt
where τ is some time duration.
D E If we assume that G to be a finite function of time,
can you specify what will dG dt
be if we take τ → ∞? From the answer of the last
question derive that for a gravitationally bounded self interacting system
2hT i + hU i = 0 .

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 (f) From the answer to question one (in the first page), can you estimate the value of
U ? That will give you a feeling about the total kinetic energy of the system.

3. In an Hydrogen atom you know that corresponding to each principal quantum number n
the orbital angular momentum values ℓ can be ranging from 0, 1, 2, · · ·n − 2, n − 1. For
each value of ℓ the z-component of the orbital angular momentum, mℓ , can have values
in the range −ℓ, −ℓ + 1, −ℓ + 2, · · ·, ℓ − 2, ℓ − 1, ℓ, which makes altogether (2ℓ + 1)
possibilities. For each possible values of mℓ there can be two possible z-component of
electron spin configuration ms as −h̄/2 and +h̄/2. Noting that the energy of the electron
in the Hydrogen atom only depends on the principle quantum number n, show that one
can accommodate at-most 2n2 electrons (all of them with the same energy) in one shell
with principle quantum number n.