These are the notes that I’m taking for myself in order to learn some statistical mechanics.
The main reference is: Anton Bovier, Lecture notes on Gibbs measures and phase transitions (Bonn University)
In thermodynamics one has:
where are respectively the mechanical, chemical and thermal components of the energy.
is also denoted by
,
where is the presure and
is the volume
where is the number of molecules, and
is the average chemical potential per molecule
where is the temperature and
is the volume
Thus we have, for a closed system:
We will view the total energy as a function of three extensive variables
:
. Then we have
are called intensive variables. The last three equations are called equations of state.
Instead of viewing as a function of three variables
one can also view it as a function of another set of three variables, e.g.
, etc. We will assume that
is a convex function, so that change is possible. (Legendre transformation). Problem: it can’t be convex ?! Howevern can have a nondegenerate Hessian ?!
Intorduce a function (of three variables
) such that
So in fact
. This sunction is called the Gibbs free energy. Some other useful functions are:
Helmholtz free energy:
Enthalpy:
In some case is linear in
:
is a constant (then we can’t compute
as a function of
). This situation is called a first order phase transition. (Example: condensation of vapor into water).
1-dimensional model:
particle, volume
, pressure
, each particle has moment
Total energy function (conserved quantity): is a constant,
Assume equi-distribution of all possible positions and momenta having a fixed
, the level
which has the highest probabality will be (assuming
very large):
. (This is the level that one will observe in reality).
The probability formula for is:
where
,
.
Equilibrium state:
Everything works very nicely in this 1-dimensional model ! This model also indicates why the entropy is a log function, and what does it mean to be a micro-state.

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