Page 11 - STATISTICAL MECHANICS: From First Principles to Macroscopic Phenomena
P. 11
Preface
This book is based on a course which I have taught over many years to gradu-
ate students in several physics departments. Students have been mainly candidates
for physics degrees but have included a scattering of people from other depart-
ments including chemical engineering, materials science and chemistry. I take a
“reductionist” view, that implicitly assumes that the basic program of physics of
complexsystemsistoconnectobservedphenomenatofundamentalphysicallawsas
represented at the molecular level by Newtonian mechanics or quantum mechanics.
While this program has historically motivated workers in statistical physics for more
than a century, it is no longer universally regarded as central by all distinguished
users of statistical mechanics 1,2 some of whom emphasize the phenomenological
role of statistical methods in organizing data at macroscopic length and time scales
with only qualitative, and often only passing, reference to the underlying micro-
scopic physics. While some very useful methods and insights have resulted from
such approaches, they generally tend to have little quantitative predictive power.
Further, the recent advances in first principles quantum mechanical methods have
put the program of predictive quantitative methods based on first principles within
reach for a broader range of systems. Thus a text which emphasizes connections to
these first principles can be useful.
The level here is similar to that of popular books such as those by Landau and
3
5
4
Lifshitz, Huang and Reichl. The aim is to provide a basic understanding of
the fundamentals and some pivotal applications in the brief space of a year. With
regard to fundamentals, I have sought to present a clear, coherent point of view
which is correct without oversimplifying or avoiding mention of aspects which are
incompletely understood. This differs from many other books, which often either
give the fundamentals extremely short shrift, on the one hand, or, on the other,
expend more mathematical and scholarly attention on them than is appropriate in a
one year graduate course. The chapters on fundamentals begin with a description
of equilibrium for classical systems followed by a similar description for quantum
ix