Master TPA-M1

Some revision problems on the microcanonical ensemble.

I. Microstate, macrostate and the fundamental principle of Statistical
Mechanics…

Let us consider three non-degenerated and equidistant energy levels

, and a toy system of N=2 particles, to be distributed among these
states.
a) Give all the possible macrostates
b) Give all the microstates in the following situations i) the particles are
distinguishable (verify Maxwell-Boltzmann formula) and ii) the particles are
indistinguishable.

Can we identify the most probable state?

Which macrostate of energy U=2 is the most probable one?
c) Same question as in (b) but considering now that the level of energy 1 has a
degeneracy g1=2

II. Another toy model : two boxes in thermal contact

Let us consider an isolated system composed of two subsystems S1 and S2. S1 contains
three atoms and S2 four atoms. The atoms are identical, indistinguishable and
independent. Each atom has a magnetic moment, m, whose component along the
quantification axis may take only two values . The contribution to the energy of each
magnetic moment is Em=-M.B where the dot represent the scalar product.
a) Calculate the total number of possible microstates of the system S1 U S2.
b) Let us assume from now on that the system is isolated with a total energy E T=-3B. If
the wall separating S1 and S2 is diathermal (it allows the heat transfer), calculate the
number of accessible number of microstates to the system S1 U S2 having the energy
ET. Enumerate them.
Which are the magnetic moments accessible to S1 and S2?
c) Assuming that the system reaches equilibrium which is the probability of a given
microstate?
d) Calculate the probability of each accessible magnetic moment of each subsystem.
e) Calculate the average energy and the average magnetic moment of each subsystem.
f) Indicate the most probable values of the energy and of magnetic moment.

III. Frenkel defects

A perfect crystal has N atoms placed regularly on the sites of a crystal lattice
represented by the black dots of figure (a). We call N’ the positions among the those
sites represented by the white dots of figure (a). N and N’ are of the same order. The
internal energy of the perfect crystal will be called U0
In finite temperature T, an atom may leave its place, creating a vacancy (the grey dot
in figure (b)) and occupying one of the N’ positions among the crystalline sites. In this
case the crystal is not perfect any more, it is said to have a “Frenkel defect”. The
necessary energy to produce one defect is >0
 Figure a) Figure b)

We will study an isolated crystal showing n of such Frenkel defects. We will consider
that NN’>>n>>1. Within this hypothesis, show that the relationship n(T) may be
approximated by:


n  NN' e 2kT

Is this relation valid for all T?