Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-thermal-and-statistical-physics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/section-a/2/solution
Past exam of the thermal and statistical physics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 Section A 2 Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-18
Measure single-particle energy from the lowest state and write , with . In a homogeneous system, the number of wavevector states in a thin spherical shell is proportional to . Changing variables from to gives the density of states per unit spatial volume,where is the area of the unit sphere in dimensions; an additional internal state degeneracy would multiply this expression by a constant.
The Bose-Einstein distribution has . At saturation, , the maximum excited-state number density isOnly the lower endpoint can cause divergence. There the integrand is proportional toThe improper integral converges precisely when its power exceeds . ThusWhen , the divergence is logarithmic; when , it is a power divergence. In either case the excited states can accommodate any fixed finite density at every positive temperature, so there is no bulk Bose-Einstein condensation at nonzero temperature.
For completeness, putting and using the Gamma function and Riemann zeta function givesAt fixed density , the right-hand side reaches at ; below it the excess particles occupy the lowest state, with condensate fraction . This is Bose condensation with power-law dispersion in the homogeneous thermodynamic limit. A finite vessel or a trapping potential changes the low-energy state count and must not be silently substituted for that setting.
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