Paper 2, Section II, C

Statistical Physics
Part II, 2010

Consider a 3-dimensional gas of NN non-interacting particles in a box of size LL where the allowed momenta are {pi}\left\{\mathbf{p}_{i}\right\}. Assuming the particles have an energy ϵ(p),ϵ(p)>0\epsilon(|\mathbf{p}|), \epsilon^{\prime}(p)>0, calculate the density of states g(ϵ)dϵg(\epsilon) d \epsilon as LL \rightarrow \infty.

Treating the particles as classical explain why the partition function is

Z=zNN!,z=0dϵg(ϵ)eϵ/kTZ=\frac{z^{N}}{N !}, \quad z=\int_{0}^{\infty} d \epsilon g(\epsilon) e^{-\epsilon / k T}

Obtain an expression for the total energy EE.

Why is pi1/L?\mathbf{p}_{i} \propto 1 / L ? By considering the dependence of the energies on the volume VV show that the pressure PP is given by

PV=N3z0dϵg(ϵ)pϵ(p)eϵ/kTP V=\frac{N}{3 z} \int_{0}^{\infty} d \epsilon g(\epsilon) p \epsilon^{\prime}(p) e^{-\epsilon / k T}

What are the results for the pressure for non-relativistic particles and also for relativistic particles when their mass can be neglected?

What is the thermal wavelength for non-relativistic particles? Why are the classical results correct if the thermal wavelength is much smaller than the mean particle separation?