Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-thermal-and-statistical-physics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/section-b/5/d/solution

Let be the coordination number of a lattice, the number of nearest neighbours of each cell away from boundaries. Define an effective chemical potential incorporating the cell's translational entropy:
Use for an unordered nearest-neighbour bond, counted once. The occupation Hamiltonian including the chemical-potential term is
Under , one bond contributes
In a regular lattice with periodic boundary conditions, the number of bonds is , and each spin occurs in linear bond terms. Therefore
The pair sum equals one half of the ordered sum used in the paper. Consequently the effective field is
Thus is the Ising model partition sum, including the displayed spin-independent constant if its absolute normalization is required. Dropping that constant changes by a multiplicative factor but leaves spin probabilities and the phase-transition argument unchanged. For simple cubic cells in three dimensions, and the first term in is . Open boundaries replace by the local coordination near the surface; the stated uniform field is the bulk or periodic-lattice result.

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