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Homework 9 (Due Wednesday, September 25th)

This document provides the homework questions for a thermodynamics class. It includes two main questions: 1) Considering an ideal gas of spin 1/2 atoms in a magnetic field, students are asked to derive expressions for the classical partition function, internal energy, heat capacity, and graph the heat capacity over temperature. 2) Considering an ideal gas of relativistic particles, students are asked to derive expressions for the classical partition function in three dimensions and one dimension, and the equation of state for the one-dimensional gas.

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82 views4 pages

Homework 9 (Due Wednesday, September 25th)

This document provides the homework questions for a thermodynamics class. It includes two main questions: 1) Considering an ideal gas of spin 1/2 atoms in a magnetic field, students are asked to derive expressions for the classical partition function, internal energy, heat capacity, and graph the heat capacity over temperature. 2) Considering an ideal gas of relativistic particles, students are asked to derive expressions for the classical partition function in three dimensions and one dimension, and the equation of state for the one-dimensional gas.

Uploaded by

Wisnu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Homework 9 (Due Wednesday, September 25th)

1. Consider a monatomic ideal gas of spin 1/2 atoms in a uniform magnetic field B. In addition to the
usual kinetic energy, each atom has an energy of ±µB where µ is the atom’s magnetic moment. The
gas is so dilute that the interatomic forces may be neglected (i.e., the gas is ideal).
(a) Show that the classical canonical partition function is
( )N
1 2V
QN = cosh(βµB)
N! λ3

(b) Find the internal energy of this gas.


(c) Find the heat capacity CV of this gas.
(d) Accurately graph CV /N k versus kT /µB using a semi-log scale (linear in the vertical; logarithmic
in the horizontal, going from 0.1 to 10). Explain why for very low and very high temperatures the heat
capacity per particle is 3k/2.

2. Consider an ideal gas of N indistinguishable, independent particles in the extremely relativistic limit
in which the energy of a particle is ϵ = cp = c|p|.
(a) Show that the classical canonical partition function is
[ ( )3 ]N
1 kT
QN = 8πV
N! hc

(b) Find the classical canonical partition function for a similar extremely relativistic gas of N
indistinguishable, independent particles but in the case where they are constrained to move in a one-
dimensional system of length L.
(c) Find the equation of state, P (L, T ), for the one-dimensional extremely relativistic gas of N
indistinguishable, independent particles.

1
Homework 9 Solutions
1. (a) Since the particles are independent, we can start with the single particle canonical partition
function, ∫ ∫ ∑
Q1 = dr dp e−βE
spins

where the energy of a particle is


p2
E= + iµB
2m
with i = −1 if the spin is aligned with the field and i = +1 if the spin is aligned against the field. Thus,
∫ ∫ ∑
+1
e−β(p
2
/2m+iµB)
Q1 = dr dp
i=−1
( )
1 ( βµB )
= (V ) e + e−βµB
λ3
2V
= cosh(βµB)
λ3

Notice that the r and p integrals are the same as for the simple monatomic ideal gas. The new feature
is the extra two states of spin up and down.
We finish by using the fact that for N indistinguishable particles, the partition function is,
( )N
1 N 1 2V
QN = Q = cosh(βµB)
N! 1 N! λ3

(b) To find the internal energy of this gas, we use the identity,
( ) ( ) ( )
∂ ∂ ∂
U = − ln QN = −3N ln λ − N ln cosh(βµB)
∂β V ∂β V ∂β V
3
= − N kT − N µB tanh(βµB)
2

(c) To find the heat capacity, CV , of this gas we use


( )
∂U 3 ∂β ∂
CV = = kN − N µB tanh(βµB)
∂T V 2 ∂T ∂β
( )
3 −1
= kN − N µB [µB sech2 (βµB)]
2 kT 2
3
= kN + N k(βµB)2 sech2 (βµB)
2

(d) The graph of CV /N k versus kT /µB is shown if Fig. 1. The reason that the heat capacity per
particle is 3k/2 at low temperature is that the spins are frozen into the ground state orientation. At
high temperature, the spins are half up and half down. Since the energy that can be put into the spins
saturates at this point, their contribution to the heat capacity drops out.

2
1.95

1.9

1.85

1.8

1.75
CV/kN

1.7

1.65

1.6

1.55

1.5
−1 0 1
10 10 10
kT/(µ B)

Figure 1: Graph of scaled heat capacity, CV /N k, versus scaled temperature, kT /µB.

2. (a) The classical partition function is


∫ ∫
1
QN = dq dp e−βE(q,p)
h3N
where the integral over q is restricted to positions inside the volume V and the integral over p is
unrestricted. For an ideal gas of indistinguishable particles
1
QN = (Q1 )N
N!
where
∫ L ∫ L ∫ L ∫ ∞ ∫ ∞ ∫ ∞
1
Q1 = dx dy dz dp x dpy dpz e−βϵ(p)
h3 0 0 0 −∞ −∞ −∞
∫ ∞ ∫ ∞ ∫ ∞
V
= dp x dp y dpz e−βϵ(p)
h3 −∞ −∞ −∞

Since ϵ(p) = pc, it’s easier to do the integrals in spherical coordinates,


∫ 2π ∫ π ∫ ∞ ( )
V 2 −βcp V 2 V k3 T 3
Q1 = 3 dϕ dθ sin θ dp p e = 3 (2π)(2) 3 3 = 8π 3 3
h 0 0 0 h c β h c
Collecting the pieces gives the desired result.
(b) In this one-dimensional system the integrals are even simpler,
∫ ∫ ∞ ∫
1 L L ∞ 2L 1
Q1 = dx dpx e−βϵ(p) = dpx e−βc|px | =
h 0 −∞ h −∞ h βc

3
so ( )N
1 2LkT
QN =
N! hc
(c) The “pressure” is1
( ) ( ) ( )
∂ kT ∂ kT N QN N kT
P = kT ln QN = QN = =
∂L T QN ∂L T QN L L

which is similar to the familiar ideal gas law in three dimensions.

1 Here P is actually a force since dW = P dL is the mechanical work.

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