to download the PDF file.
Physics 445 - Statistical Physics is a fourth year course for science students at Simon Fraser University. This page contains links to lecture notes prepared by Dave Boal. The lectures are brief: about four typed pages per lecture. The files are stored in PDF format and can be read by Adobe Acrobat Reader (click to download a free copy from Adobe). Canadian spelling conventions are used.
Click to download the PDF file.
Lecture 1 - Introduction; random walks - I
Lecture 2 - Random walks - II
Lecture 3 - Random walks at large N
Lecture 4 - Chains
Lecture 5 - Fundamental postulate
Lecture 6 - Classical ideal gas
Lecture 7 - Ensembles and entropy
Lecture 8 - Interacting systems
Lecture 9 - Temperature and specific heat
Lecture 10 - Systems in thermal contact
Lecture 11 - Thermodynamics
Lecture 12 - Ensembles
Lecture 13 - Partition function
Lecture 14 - Grand canonical ensemble
Lecture 15 - Equipartition theorem
Lecture 16 - Quantum oscillators
Lecture 17 - Ideal gas in detail
Lecture 18 - Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution
Lecture 19 - MB continued
Lecture 20 - Quantum statistics
Lecture 21 - Indistinguishable particles
Lecture 22 - Bosons
Lecture 23 - Fermions
Lecture 24 - Density of states
Lecture 25 - T=0 Fermi gas
Lecture 26 - Black-body radiation I
Lecture 27 - Black-body radiation II
Lecture 28 - Superfluids
Lecture 29 - Heat capacities of metals
Lecture 30 - Low temperature Fermi gas
Lecture 31 - Phase transitions
Lecture 32 - Ising model
Lecture 33 - Non-ideal classical gas
Lecture 34 - Van der Waals equation
Supplement - Quick quantum mechanics
