Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-condensed-matter-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2018/3/e/i/solution
Past exam of the condensed matter physics course of the University of Oxford 2018 3 e i Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
The small parameter controlling the local Taylor expansion is the typical bond displacement divided by . In the classical regime, the root-mean-square displacement is . ThusFor example, the magnitude of the cubic term divided by the quadratic term is , and subsequent terms carry further powers of this ratio. A physically safe bound-bond regime also has , or . These are the same parametric scale, differing only by a factor two. The inequalities are strong: they do not imply that a truncated local expansion is accurate close to several thousand kelvin.
At very low temperature, replace the classical fluctuation estimate by the zero-point motion as discussed in part ii. Its bond displacement is small compared with for the supplied parameters, so low temperature does not itself invalidate the local expansion. Actual melting, other neighbours and bond breaking are outside this one-dimensional bond model.
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