Statistical Mechanics 2018

Grades - Problem sets 1, 2 and 3.

Course Information.

Problem set 1 (deadline 27/08).

Problem set 2 (deadline 17/09).
Check out Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 040505 (2018).

Problem set 3 (deadline 15/10).
Check out Sec. IV of arXiv 1803.11180 for problem 2.
Solution of problem 3.3.

Problem set 4 (deadline 05/11).
Mathematica notebook for problem 4.1

Problem set 5 (deadline 10/12).

Monitoria:

Monitor: Pedro Harunari
Local: sala 207 da ala central.
Horário: 2a as 14 as 16 e 5a das 13 as 15.
Pedro’s e-mail is pedro.harunari@usp.br

Recommended books:

 - R. Feynman, Statistical Mechanics: a set of lectures.
 - S. Salinas, Introdução à física estatística.
 -
Nielsen and Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information.
 -
S. Sachdev, Quantum Phase Transitions.
-
A. Altland and B. Simons, Condensed Matter Field Theory.
- Thermodynamics in the quantum regime.
Editors: F. Binder, L. A. Correa, C. Gogolin, J. Anders and G. Adesso. 

Lecture notes: 

- 01: The Gibbs state.
   Reading: Feynman, ch 1 (very confusing, but fun) and Salinas, ch 2.

- 02: Thermodynamics and information.
   Reading: Salinas, ch 3 and ch 5. E. Jaynes, Information theory and
   statistical mechanics
, Physical Review, 106, 620-630 (1957).

- 03: Density matrix theory.
  Reading: Nielsen, ch 2, Salinas ch 2.4, Feynman, ch 2.

- 04: Quantum Statistical Mechanics.
   Reading: Salinas, ch 13.1. Sachdev, ch 1.
   Also have a look at "More is different", by P. W. Anderson.

- 05: Phonons and field theory - Part 1.
  Feynman, ch 6.1-6.5. Salinas 11.1.

- 06: Phonons and field theory - Part 2.
  Altland, ch 1.

- 07: Quantum thermodynamics.
   There is a new book called “Thermodynamics in the quantum regime”.
   See also:
    - ArXiv 1601.01833.
    - Jarzynski, PRL, 78, 2690 (1997).
    - Jarzynski and Wójcik, PRL, 92, 230602 (2004).

- 08: Quantum thermodynamics - Applications and examples.
  See Reeb and Wolf’s paper: arXiv 1306.4352.

- 09: Second quantization.
  Altlando, ch 2, Feynman, ch 6.7-6.8

- 10: Second quantization: examples.
   Check out Nature 528, 77 (2015) and Nature 448, 1029 (2007).

- 11: Magnons.
   Salinas 11.2
   See Chumak, et. al., Nature Communications, 5, 4700 (2013).

- 12: The grand-canonical ensemble.
  Silly slides on BECs.
  Mathematica notebook on how to compute the chemical potential.
  See Salinas, chapters 7 and 10. 

- 13: Quantum spin chains.
   Mathematica notebook for the XX model at finite temperatures.
   The basic reference is Lieb, Schultz and Mattis, Annals of Physics, 16, (1961) 407-466.

- 14: Phase transitions and mean-field approximation.
  See Salinas, chs 12.2 and 13.2. 
  For more information in the quantum-classical mapping and the relation with path integrals, see chapter 4 of Altland and Simmons.

- 15: Spontaneous symmetry breaking.
  See Kardar, Statistical Mechanics of Fields, chapter 2 and Salinas 12.3. 
  A nice solution of the phase transitions of the Dicke model can be found in Wang and Hioe, Phys. Rev. A., 7, 831 (1973). 
  The paper I mentioned in class, about experimentally accessing Higgs and Goldstone modes in an optical lattice is this one: Léonard, et. al., Science, 358, 1415 (2017).

- 16: Quantum Langevin Equation.

 © Gabriel Teixeira Landi 2018