Paper 2, Section II, C
(a) State the Bose-Einstein distribution formula for the mean occupation numbers of discrete single-particle states with energies in a gas of bosons. Write down expressions for the total particle number and the total energy when the singleparticle states can be treated as continuous, with energies and density of states .
(b) Blackbody radiation at temperature is equivalent to a gas of photons with
where is the volume and is a constant. What value of the chemical potential is required when applying the Bose-Einstein distribution to photons? Show that the heat capacity at constant volume satisfies for some constant , to be determined.
(c) Consider a system of bosonic particles of fixed total number . The particles are trapped in a potential which has ground state energy zero and which gives rise to a density of states , where is a constant. Explain, for this system, what is meant by Bose-Einstein condensation and show that the critical temperature satisfies . If is the number of particles in the ground state, show that for just below
for some constant , to be determined.
(d) Would you expect photons to exhibit Bose-Einstein condensation? Explain your answer very briefly.