Paper 4, Section II, A
Consider a classical gas of particles in volume , where the total energy is the standard kinetic energy plus a potential depending on the relative locations of the particles .
(i) Starting from the partition function, show that the free energy of the gas is
where is the free energy when .
(ii) Suppose now that the gas is fairly dilute and that the integral in is small compared to and is dominated by two-particle interactions. Show that the free energy simplifies to the form
and find an integral expression for . Using ( ) find the equation of state of the gas, and verify that is the second virial coefficient.
(iii) The equation of state for a Clausius gas is
for some constant . Find the second virial coefficient for this gas. Evaluate for a gas of hard sphere atoms of radius .