Paper 2, Section II, A
(a) Starting from the canonical ensemble, derive the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for the velocities of particles in a classical gas of atoms of mass . Derive also the distribution of speeds of the particles. Calculate the most probable speed.
(b) A certain atom emits photons of frequency . A gas of these atoms is contained in a box. A small hole is cut in a wall of the box so that photons can escape in the positive -direction where they are received by a detector. The frequency of the photons received is Doppler shifted according to the formula
where is the -component of the velocity of the atom that emits the photon and is the speed of light. Let be the temperature of the gas.
(i) Calculate the mean value of .
(ii) Calculate the standard deviation .
(iii) Show that the relative number of photons received with frequency between and is where
for some coefficient to be determined. Hence explain how observations of the radiation emitted by the gas can be used to measure its temperature.