Paper 1, Section II, C
Part II, 2016
Consider an ideal quantum gas with one-particle states of energy . Let denote the probability that state is occupied by particles. Here, can take the values 0 or 1 for fermions and any non-negative integer for bosons. The entropy of the gas is given by
(a) Write down the constraints that must be satisfied by the probabilities if the average energy and average particle number are kept at fixed values.
Show that if is maximised then
where and are Lagrange multipliers. What is ?
(b) Insert these probabilities into the expression for , and combine the result with the first law of thermodynamics to find the meaning of and .
(c) Calculate the average occupation number for a gas of fermions.