Statistical Mechanics

About this Title
This text is designed for postgraduate courses in statistical mechanics, and provides a basic grounding in a manner that brings out the essence of the subject with due rigour but without undue pain. This classic text, which was first published in 1972 and has continued to be popular ever since, has now been brought up to date by incorporating the remarkable developments in the field of phase transitions and critical phenomena that have taken place in the intervening years. This has been done by adding three new chapters which will enhance the usefulness of this book both for students and instructors. Widely acclaimed for its clean derivations and clear explanations, Statistical Mechanics in its second edition will continue to provide further generations of students with a solid training in the methods of statistical physics.

Table of Contents
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Historical Introduction 1
Ch. 1 The Statistical Basis of Thermodynamics 9
Ch. 2 Elements of Ensemble Theory 30
Ch. 3 The Canonical Ensemble 43
Ch. 4 The Grand Canonical Ensemble 90
Ch. 5 Formulation of Quantum Statistics 104
Ch. 6 The Theory of Simple Gases 127
Ch. 7 Ideal Bose Systems 157
Ch. 8 Ideal Fermi Systems 195
Ch. 9 Statistical Mechanics of Interacting Systems: The Method of Cluster Expansions 232
Ch. 10 Statistical Mechanics of Interacting Systems: The Method of Quantized Fields 262
Ch. 11 Phase Transitions: Critically, Universality and Scaling 305
Ch. 12 Phase Transitions: Exact (or Almost Exact) Results for the Various Models 366
Ch. 13 Phase Transitions: The Renormalization Group Approach 414
Ch. 14 Fluctuations 452
App. A. Influence of boundary conditions on the distribution of quantum states 495
App. B. Certain mathematical functions 497
App. C. "Volume" and "surface area" of an n-dimensional sphere of radius R 504
App. D. On Bose - Einstein functions 506
App. E. On Fermi - Dirac functions 508
App. F. On Watson functions 510
Bibliography 513
Index 523