Welcome to the Spring 2024 Homepage for Physics 8.334

The course is taught by Prof. Mehran Kardar.

Lectures and Recitations:   MWF   2.30-4  (3-370) 

Catalogue Description: A two-semester course on statistical mechanics. Basic principles are examined in 8.333: the laws of thermodynamics and the concepts of temperature, work, heat, and entropy. Postulates of classical statistical mechanics, microcanonical, canonical, and grand canonical distributions; applications to lattice vibrations, ideal gas, photon gas. Quantum statistical mechanics; Fermi and Bose systems. Interacting systems: cluster expansions, van der Waal's gas, and mean-field theory. Topics from modern statistical mechanics are explored in 8.334: the hydrodynamic limit and classical field theories. Phase transitions and broken symmetries: universality, correlation functions, and scaling theory. The renormalization approach to collective phenomena. Dynamic critical behavior. Random systems.

General course information:

• Teaching Staff
• Course Organization (texts, course policies, due dates, grading, etc.)
• Course Schedule
• Course Outline

Check these pages often for updates:

• Announcements
• Anonymous Comments
• Homework Problems
• Homework Solutions
• Lecture Notes
• Tests
• Grades

From these pages you can access copies of all handouts distributed in class.

- last update 2/2/24  by M. Kardar