General Information

PHYS 4488: This course focuses on those topics in statistical mechanics of interest to scholars in many fields. Topics include random walks and emergent properties; temperature and equilibrium; phase space dynamics and ergodicity; entropy; free energies; quantum statistical mechanics; calculation and computation; order parameters, broken symmetries, and topology; correlations, response, and dissipation; abrupt phase transitions; and continuous phase transitions, fractals, and the renormalization group. Taught in conjunction with the graduate course PHYS 6562, this version is advised for undergraduates and interested graduates outside of Physics.

PHYS 6562: A broad, graduate level view of statistical mechanics, with applications to not only physics and chemistry, but to computation, mathematics, dynamical and complex systems, and biology. Some traditional focus areas will not be covered in detail (thermodynamics, phase diagrams, perturbative methods, interacting gasses and liquids).

Prerequisites

A high level of sophistication, equivalent to but not necessarily the same as that of a first-year physics graduate student (undergrad-level quantum, classical mechanics, and thermodynamics). Only a small portion of the course (roughly one and a half weeks) will demand a knowledge of quantum mechanics; students with no quantum background have found the rest of the course comprehensible and useful, if challenging.

Topics Covered

Workload

Pretty light. Prelims are take home. Homeworks have ranging difficulty - you choose your own problems out of ~8 possible answers. If you take undergrad version, you need to do 10 less hw problems over the semester than grad students. The problems are sometimes very short and sometimes ridicuously long but they’re all interesting. [Spring 2024]

General Advice

Testimonials

A fun class if nothing else. It definitley assumes background in statistics, quantum mechanics, classical mechanics etc. But that isn’t to say you won’t do well if you haven’t been exposed to these before but you might not get as much from it. The lectures are less lectures and more doing problems with other students. Even though it’s crosslisted it’s mainly comprised of grad students. Rating: 4/5. [Spring 2024]

Resources

Past Offerings

Semester Professor Median Grade Course Page
Spring 2022 Jim Sethna   PHYS4488_SP22.pdf
Spring 2024 Jim Sethna   PHYS4488_SP24.pdf