Paper 3, Section II, D
What is meant by the chemical potential of a thermodynamic system? Derive the Gibbs distribution for a system at temperature and chemical potential (and fixed volume) with variable particle number .
Consider a non-interacting, two-dimensional gas of fermionic particles in a region of fixed area, at temperature and chemical potential . Using the Gibbs distribution, find the mean occupation number of a one-particle quantum state of energy . Show that the density of states is independent of and deduce that the mean number of particles between energies and is very well approximated for by
where is the Fermi energy. Show that, for small, the heat capacity of the gas has a power-law dependence on , and find the power.