# Bibliography to understand Fermi, Bose and Boltzmann statistics?

1. Jun 29, 2014

### Tosh5457

I'm studying by Statistical Mechanics (Huang, page 180) but can't understand many things there, can anyone provide a good bibliography to study this? I don't understand what's an occupation number of a given momentum: if it's the number of particles with that given momentum, why can it only be 0 or 1 in Fermi gas, doesn't the gas has a lot of particles which can possibly have that momentum? And why is momentum written like:

$$p = \frac{h}{L}\underset{n}{\rightarrow}$$

where n is a vector which components are 0 or integers, and L is the cube root volume of the system.

2. Jun 29, 2014

### WannabeNewton

All of your questions concern very basic quantum mechanics rather than statistical mechanics. Thankfully, most stat mech books will give a brief overview of the relevant QM when delving into quantum stat mech. I wouldn't recommend using Huang by the way-it's a terrible, terrible book.

I would recommend, for your purposes:

-Chapter 9 of "Fundamentals of Statistical and Thermal Physics"-Reif
-Chapter 7 and Appendix A of "An Introduction to Thermal Physics-Schroeder
-Chapter 5 of "Statistical Mechanics"-Pathria
-Chapters 3,4,5 of the following notes by the almighty Kip Thorne: http://www.pma.caltech.edu/Courses/ph136/yr2011/

3. Jun 29, 2014

### Tosh5457

Well in the course of Quantum Mechanics I took we didn't speak of any of these things, or we did indirectly and I'm not making the connection, so my questions remain. Ty

4. Jun 29, 2014

### WannabeNewton

I see. We did in my QM course so I assumed it was standard. Anyways, see section 3.2.5. of Kip Thorne's notes on kinetic theory: http://www.pma.caltech.edu/Courses/ph136/yr2011/1103.1.K.pdf

In principle this section should answer all of your questions but if not you can always ask more specific questions based on said section.

5. Jun 30, 2014

### Tosh5457

Thanks it did. Now I need to learn how to deduce the state equations for fermions and bosons gas, and write the grand canonical partition function for them, as well as Boltzmann's. I'll be heading to the library tomorrow, which of those books do you think explains that? Huang is really a terrible book, it has the content but the deductions skip a lot of crucial steps IMO, and unfortunately is the book my teacher is following.

Last edited: Jun 30, 2014
6. Jun 30, 2014

### WannabeNewton

Get Reif and Pathria. In chapter 9 Reif calculates the canonical partition functions for Fermi and Bose gases in full detail and computes their thermodynamic properties right after. Pathria has a section on the grand canonical ensemble for quantum mechanical systems in chapter 5.

7. Jun 30, 2014

### atyy

:rofl: It's not! It's a terrible, terrible, terrible book.

One redeeming feature was that the edition I had had a cover that was nice to touch.

8. Jul 1, 2014

### Demystifier

If Huang is so terrible terrible terrible book, then why do specialists and teachers of statistical physics so often cite and recommend it?

9. Jul 1, 2014

### atyy

I found it inscrutable to learn from. It's authoritative after one has learnt a bit.

10. Jul 1, 2014

### Demystifier

So it's something like Weinberg for quantum field theory.