Component chemical potentials. Define the per-spin quantum concentration . For a classical component with one-particle potential energy , the local Helmholtz free energy density is . Its derivative with respect to number density gives the full local chemical potential, including the magnetic energy. With the up state defined as the lower level,
The Bohr magneton is a magnetic moment; is an energy. The factor two for the two spin states is not already included in .
Total equilibrium chemical potential. If spin conversion is allowed, a particle can be added in either spin state at the same equilibrium free-energy cost. Thus
not their sum or zero. The total particle number, or a reservoir, fixes this common value; the supplied information does not specify a numerical chemical potential. A useful local expression is , with , whose density dependence is found below.
Why it is uniform and common. Moving a small number of one species from to changes the free energy by . If this difference were nonzero, a transfer could lower the free energy. Equilibrium under diffusion therefore requires each full chemical potential to be spatially constant. A spin flip transferring from down to up similarly changes free energy by , proving equality when spin relaxation is permitted. This is chemical equilibrium of a classical spin gas. Mere thermal contact at fixed separate spin populations would not enforce the latter equality; full spin equilibrium is the necessary assumption. A spatially varying magnetic field is balanced by a spatially varying density, not by a varying full chemical potential.
Magnetization. Invert the component equations at the common :
The two levels have moments and along the field. The magnetization, magnetic moment per unit volume, is therefore
Its SI units are . This expression neglects interactions and magnetic feedback of the gas on the specified external field.
High-temperature response. For , and , yielding
At fixed number density, this is the Curie law: the susceptibility with respect to is . The conventional dimensionless susceptibility with respect to is approximately when . At fixed , however, changes with temperature, so itself need not scale simply as . The moment per particle has the Curie behaviour; the density constraint must be stated.
Total density. Adding the two populations gives
For a finite container and fixed , normalization gives . In a weak field the leading density is uniform, with changes only of order . Particles preferentially occupy regions where the magnitude of the field lowers one of the spin energies, even though the common chemical potential remains uniform.
Gibbs free energy and its minimum. For fixed atom number , there are sites and
configurations with indistinguishable vacancies. Their configurational entropy is . Relative to the vacancy-free Gibbs free energy , creating vacancies costs energy and pressure-volume work . Put . Then
At leading thermodynamic order, Stirling's approximation gives
The minimum obtained from the stationary point below is
If the perfect crystal's internal energy and other entropy are chosen as zero, its pressure term is . More generally the information given fixes the vacancy contribution rather than the absolute bulk free energy. The pressure-volume term must be retained because the number of sites, and hence the volume, changes.
Equilibrium vacancy population. Differentiating the extensive free energy at fixed gives
The stationary point is consequently the unique interior minimum. Write ; its condition is , giving the requested thermodynamic result for equilibrium vacancies with variable lattice size,
Substitution back into cancels the terms containing and yields the boxed minimum. In the dilute-defect limit , . The Bose-like denominator is a consequence of the changing number of lattice sites and combinatorial entropy; it does not assert that vacancies here are an ideal gas of bosonic particles.
There is a finite-size correction to a variable-site vacancy model if “average” is interpreted exactly. The microscopic count written above gives the relative isothermal-isobaric sum
so
Its relative equilibrium free energy is . Thus the source's numerator is correct to leading extensive order, but is not the exact finite- mean for that stated configuration count. A free-energy minimum is likewise not generally identical to the mean of a finite distribution. These distinctions vanish relatively as .
Thermal volume. Each atom or vacancy occupies volume , so at the same thermodynamic accuracy
For the exact counting model, replace by in . The vacancy-free limit is as . This model isolates expansion from vacancies, taking and constant; it omits ordinary phonon thermal expansion. Its growth at high temperature should not be extrapolated to arbitrarily large vacancy fractions in a stable crystal, and is essential for a normalizable variable-site ensemble.
One particle. Use the classical phase-space normalization of one quantum state per volume , with no unspecified internal degeneracy. For and , the canonical partition function factorizes into momentum and position integrals:
The Gaussian momentum integral is . In spherical coordinates, put :
Therefore the classical ideal gas in a spherical linear trap has
Here is a force, in , so is a length and is dimensionless. A nonconfining would not give this finite spatial integral. As required by the classical phase-space approximation, the temperature must exceed the trap's discrete level scale.
Indistinguishable dilute particles. Independent labeled particles would give . In the classical dilute regime, division by removes the overcounting of permutations of identical particles:
This is the Maxwell-Boltzmann limit, not an exact quantum canonical partition function at high occupation. Exchange effects cannot be captured merely by continuing this formula beyond its dilute regime.
Free energy, energy and entropy. The Helmholtz free energy is
With leading Stirling's approximation, , this becomes
At fixed trap strength, . Differentiating gives the requested entropy,
The is : the first term comes from indistinguishability through Stirling's formula, and the second from the temperature dependence of . Without the large- approximation, . Independently,
The kinetic contribution is and the linear-trap potential contribution is , also obtained from generalized equipartition.
Entropy curves and reversible cooling. For a fixed and a reference pair , the dependence can be written without logarithms of dimensional quantities:
At each fixed , the entropy increases logarithmically and is concave downward in ; decreasing shifts the curve upward. Its formal classical divergence as marks failure of classical statistics, not a physical negative-infinite entropy.
Figure 1.
Original classical entropy curves for two linear-trap strengths; a horizontal constant-entropy arrow shows cooling on reversible decompression, within the dilute regime
. Details.
For a reversible adiabatic change, is constant at fixed , so
Hence reducing lowers the temperature: this is isentropic decompression of a spherical linear trap. The gas does work on the control that weakens the trap. Equivalently , with ; inserting gives the same relation. Reversibility requires an equilibrium sequence without heat input or entropy production. Because stays constant on this adiabat, also stays constant: this mechanism cools the cloud but does not by itself increase quantum degeneracy.
Chemical potential and quantum threshold. From the extensive free energy,
Thus the quantum gas fugacity is . Classical statistics requires ; quantum effects become important as the chemical potential comes within order of the lowest one-particle energy. With the semiclassical zero at the potential minimum, the quantum degeneracy threshold in a spherical linear trap is consequently
There are no numerical values of in the paper, so this parameter-dependent estimate is the requested atom number. It also follows from the peak density: , and degeneracy starts when is order one. The criterion is a crossover estimate, not an assertion that the classical formula remains valid at . For spinless bosons the continuum excited-state saturation is more specifically , while for fermions the onset is occupation constrained by exclusion. At temperatures comparable with the quantum trap spacing, the actual ground energy must be included consistently rather than identified exactly with the classical minimum.
First solve the equation of state for the volume:
The Gibbs free energy has differential . At fixed temperature and particle number, integrate between the two pressures:
Consequently
Use , keeping both endpoint pressures fixed while differentiating the difference:
Equivalently, the Maxwell relation gives , whose pressure integral is the same result. These are the Gibbs free-energy change for a pressure-linear gas correction identities. The physical path requires and positive volume throughout. The correction has units of volume per particle, so each term in is an energy and each term in has units of energy per kelvin.
For a phonon mode of angular frequency , the equilibrium occupation is
Well above the Debye temperature, the relevant vibrational energies are small compared with . Expanding the exponential gives
The spectrum and its cutoff are fixed in the model, so the remaining sum is temperature independent. Thus
For example, the three-dimensional Debye model with gives . This is the high-temperature phonon number in the Debye model. The number of phonon quanta can exceed ; counts modes, not their total occupation. Under the stipulated proportionality to phonon number, only the phonon contribution to resistivity has been calculated. A temperature-independent residual resistivity would add an intercept in a real sample.
Fermion occupation and ordinary metallic heat capacity. The Fermi-Dirac distribution for a single-particle state is
At low temperature it changes appreciably only in an energy window of width of order about . If the full density of states is smooth and nonzero there, only about states change population. Each excited particle or hole carries energy of order relative to the Fermi surface, so is of order . Differentiation therefore gives .
More precisely, the fixed-number Sommerfeld expansion gives
Here includes all counted internal species. This argument requires and a density of states varying slowly across the thermal window; a band edge or vanishing density of states can change the power law.
Two-dimensional linear dispersion at zero chemical potential. Let count identical positive-energy branches, keeping the state-counting convention explicit. The number of wavevector states in a ring of radius is . With , this gives
At , the thermal energy of this branch is
The dimensionless integral is . Differentiating gives
This is the heat capacity for a two-dimensional linear fermion dispersion. A physical neutral particle–hole-symmetric Dirac cone also has electron holes in its filled negative-energy band. Their excitation energy gives an equal contribution, doubling for the same cone count. The scaling is unchanged. For a positive-energy-only gas, holding allows its mean particle number to vary; a neutral two-band surface instead maintains zero net excess charge as electron–hole pairs are thermally excited. These conventions should not be conflated when specifying an exact coefficient.
Nonzero chemical potential. The ordinary metallic regime is
The thermal window then lies far from the cone tip. Since , its fractional change across that window is only of order . Treating it as locally constant restores the Sommerfeld result . When is comparable to or larger than , the window probes the vanishing density of states near the tip and crosses toward the neutral behavior, provided the linear dispersion remains valid.
Bulk phonons and the surface-to-bulk comparison. For the topological insulator model, assume bulk electronic excitations are frozen out while the conducting surface remains active. In three dimensions, acoustic phonons have a density of modes proportional to . Normalize the Debye spectrum to modes:
The thermal part of the energy is
At , extending the upper integration limit to infinity introduces an exponentially small error. With and ,
Temperature-independent zero-point energy makes no contribution to this heat capacity. The requested ratio consequently scales as
For a fixed shape and composition, and , so the ratio grows as . Smaller samples and lower temperatures favor the surface contribution. It dominates if the dimensionless right-hand side, including its state-counting prefactor, exceeds unity. This is the surface-electron and bulk-phonon heat-capacity crossover.
The continuum electronic law also requires a thermal energy larger than the surface finite-size level spacing, of order . The phonon continuum has its own finite-size cutoff. Therefore dominance obtained by formally taking cannot always be inferred from the two continuum power laws alone.
There is a numerical-normalization qualification in the paper. Combining the explicit one-positive-branch result above with the conventional -mode Debye normalization gives ratio prefactor ; including electron holes doubles it. For , this is approximately before that doubling, rather than the supplied . The problem specifies neither a cone/spin multiplicity that equates these nor another mode normalization. Its supplied prefactor is therefore used as the stipulated approximation for the requested numerical estimate, rather than claimed as an exact consequence of the single-branch count.
Numerical estimate. A cubic sample of volume has side . Counting the conducting surface on all six faces gives
For one atom per cubic cell of side ,
Use and . Inserting the stated , and into the paper's supplied prefactor gives
Thus bulk phonons dominate at this temperature in this estimate. If only one face contributes, the ratio is ; if there are chemical atoms per unit cell, divide the corresponding estimate by . These geometrical and crystallographic factors are not supplied explicitly.
With the same prefactor and geometry, extrapolating would suggest equality near . However, the surface finite-size scale is already of order for this specimen. That extrapolated crossover lies outside the continuum electronic regime, so it is not a reliable prediction of the sample's ultimate lowest-temperature heat capacity.
Classical translational statistics. Write the number density as and the thermal de Broglie wavelength as . Quantum exchange is negligible when wave packets rarely overlap:
The equivalent state-counting statement is that the mean occupation of each thermally relevant one-particle state is much smaller than one. The equations in this question count one internal species; with equally populated spin states the relevant density per species is .
Let be the dimensionless quantum gas fugacity, with the lowest one-particle energy chosen as zero. Both quantum distributions can be written
If , then for all , recovering Maxwell–Boltzmann statistics. Conversely, low occupation even at the spectrum's bottom requires for bosons or for fermions; either condition implies
A single high-energy state can be sparsely occupied even in a degenerate gas, so the condition must hold across the relevant spectrum, not just for one arbitrarily chosen energy. Also, classical translational statistics does not imply that all internal excitation energies or other quantum effects can be ignored.
Grand partition function, density and pressure. Noninteracting particles have independent occupations of each one-particle state. Put . Summing the allowed occupations gives
Therefore
The grand potential is for this homogeneous gas. Replacing the sum by and using gives
The mean number is , giving
For bosons, the grand sum requires when the ground energy is zero. A macroscopic condensate at the limiting must be separated from the continuum integral in the condensed phase. The following small- calculation is in the normal, nondegenerate regime, so that complication does not enter.
Density expansion and inversion. Expand the occupation as a geometric series:
The Gaussian wavevector integral for its th term is
It follows that
For the inverse series, put and try . Substitution gives , hence
The leading equality directly connects the density and occupancy criteria for classical behavior.
Pressure and its first quantum correction. Expanding the logarithm in the pressure expression gives one extra factor compared with the density series:
Insert the inverse series. To second order in ,
Thus
The first quantum correction at fixed density and temperature is
It is negative for bosons and positive for fermions, and vanishes in the classical density limit.
Virial coefficient. Define the number-density virial expansion by
The coefficient has units in this convention. Comparing terms gives
This is the exchange contribution to the second virial coefficient. It arises without a pair-interaction potential; the underlying gas is noninteracting. A molar-density convention would multiply this by the Avogadro constant. For equally populated internal species, exchange occurs within each species and the coefficient in terms of total density is smaller by a factor .
Why the two signs differ. Bosonic exchange symmetry enhances the probability of nearby identical bosons, whereas fermionic exchange symmetry suppresses nearby identical fermions in the same internal state. In the dilute regime, the normalized equal-time pair detection correlation is
The exchange part follows by squaring the Gaussian one-particle coherence factor . At zero separation this gives for bosons and for one-component fermions. Integrating the exchange pair weight provides a direct coefficient check:
Bunching therefore acts like an effective statistical attraction in the dilute equation of state, lowering the pressure needed at fixed density. Exclusion acts like an effective statistical repulsion, raising it. Neither description asserts an actual interparticle force. Different internal fermion species do not exclude each other from a common spatial location in the same way, explaining the importance of the species convention.
Use the Gibbs-Duhem equation for a homogeneous, extensive, single-component thermodynamic phase:
At fixed temperature, this becomes , with number density . Separately, at fixed particle number,
The chain rule along the same isothermal process in the equation of state now gives
Consequently
This is isothermal compressibility from chemical-potential response. Since chemical potential has units of energy per particle, the right-hand side has units of volume per energy, or , as required. The derivation assumes a smooth bulk equation of state; changing the fractions of coexisting thermodynamic phases at fixed pressure needs separate treatment.
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 is
Only the lower endpoint can cause divergence. There the integrand is proportional to
The improper integral converges precisely when its power exceeds . Thus
When , 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 gives
At 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.
Canonical probabilities. A canonical ensemble describes a system of fixed particle number and fixed external parameters such as volume, weakly coupled to a much larger thermal reservoir. They exchange energy and reach thermal equilibrium, while the reservoir's temperature stays effectively constant. The interaction energy is negligible in the state counting. The combined isolated system is described by equal probabilities for its accessible microstates.
If its total energy is , the probability of a particular system microstate is proportional to the reservoir multiplicity at . Writing that multiplicity as , expand its entropy:
The large-reservoir limit suppresses the higher terms. Normalization therefore gives
The sum counts individual microstates; when grouping them by energy, their state degeneracies must be included. This is the canonical partition function.
Classical orientational heat capacity. Hold the magnetic field fixed. Orientations of the magnetic dipole moment have the solid angle measure . With , the angular partition function is
Choosing a normalized angular measure would remove , with no effect on the energy derivatives. Differentiating at fixed ,
The angular average is the Langevin function. Since ,
This is the heat capacity of a classical magnetic dipole, in for one magnetic moment. The word specific here refers to that single moment; independent magnetic moments have times this heat capacity. At the energy is independent of orientation and , obtained by the continuous limit. At fixed nonzero , the classical low-temperature limit instead gives .
Equipartition and its proof. The equipartition theorem states that an independent quadratic term in a classical Hamiltonian, with , contributes to its mean energy. One needs a canonical measure that factors as times the measure of the remaining variables, convergence of the integrals, and vanishing boundary terms. The coordinate must not be restricted by a thermally important hard boundary or a coupled constraint.
For , integration by parts gives
Integrate over all other variables and divide by . It follows that
The same reasoning applies to quadratic momenta among the canonical variables. It is the number of quadratic energy contributions that is counted, not an unrestricted count of coordinate labels.
Two soft orientational directions. When , the moment is concentrated near alignment. Introduce local Cartesian coordinates in the tangent plane and . To leading order,
The two quadratic terms each contribute , so
This agrees with the exact angular calculation. Treating alone as one Cartesian quadratic variable would miss the measure and the second tangent direction. There are no extra rotational kinetic terms in the stipulated Hamiltonian; adding such terms would be a different model.
Quantum spin one. The spin projections are , with . Put , where is the gyromagnetic ratio. The three energies are , irrespective of the sign of . Relative to the ground state they are . Thus, with ,
Differentiation, or the canonical energy fluctuation identity , gives
In the requested limit,
This spin-1 paramagnet has a nondegenerate ground state and a finite spectral gap. Excitations are exponentially rare, so its heat capacity tends to zero. Classical orientational equipartition assumed a continuum of arbitrarily small excitation energies; that assumption fails when . This is a change in the accessible state spectrum, not a violation of the equipartition theorem within its classical domain.
Occupation and the two-dimensional Fermi energy. For an independent single-particle state, the Fermi-Dirac distribution is
The chemical potential enforces the chosen mean particle number through , including spin states in the sum. It is common to all states in particle-exchange equilibrium and must generally change with temperature or field when the total mean number is held fixed. At zero temperature, the distribution becomes a Heaviside step function at the Fermi energy.
Let the sample area be and let be its internal spin spin degeneracy. In the continuum limit, filling the disk gives
Therefore
For spin-half fermions with both spin states available, and ; for a spin-polarized gas . The question does not specify the area or spin degeneracy, so these conventions must be stated rather than extracting an energy from alone. Although the original text calls momentum, the supplied dispersion makes it a wave vector; physical momentum is . The result agrees with the constant two-dimensional free-electron density of states. Discrete level spacings in a finite sample would require a specified boundary spectrum.
One level occupied on average. Write and . The two mean spin occupations are
Imposing gives , hence . Thus, for every positive temperature,
The total magnetic moment is . Consequently
This is the grand-canonical spin susceptibility of a half-filled single level. Empty, singly occupied and doubly occupied orbital states are allowed in the grand canonical ensemble. At zero field, the singly occupied configurations together have probability , explaining the factor of two relative to one permanent spin-half moment. If exactly one electron were required at all times, a canonical two-state partition function would instead give and . That different answer does not implement the stated average-number constraint.
Density-of-states formula for the susceptibility. Here is the zero-field single-spin density of states. Regard its argument as the full spin-shifted energy. The shifted functions are , so
The total number is even in ; thus at fixed total number on a smooth branch. More directly, terms from cancel in the spin difference because the two densities coincide at zero field. To first order,
It follows that
For a physical energy band, take to vanish below its lower edge. Provided the endpoint term vanishes, integration by parts also gives
This form displays the positive response and the narrow thermal window around . A sharp band edge is included by the corresponding distributional derivative in the first expression. The susceptibility defined here is the derivative of total magnetic moment with respect to , with units ; it is not automatically a dimensionless SI volume susceptibility. A density-of-states convention per unit volume likewise gives a response per unit volume. These are the field conventions for magnetic susceptibility.
Chemical potential at fixed number. Define the integrated single-spin state count
The probability kernel has unit integral, mean , and variance . Using integration by parts,
Expand about . The linear term integrates to zero, while gives
This is the number form of the Sommerfeld expansion. Since at zero temperature, set with :
Therefore
The coefficient can be obtained directly. With ,
For example, the sum follows by expanding on , using the evenness of the kernel and integrating each exponential. Thus . A density of states increasing with energy gives a downward quadratic chemical-potential shift. For the constant two-dimensional density of states that shift vanishes to this order; a finite lower band edge still allows exponentially small corrections.
Low-temperature susceptibility at fixed number. Apply the same kernel expansion to itself:
The shift of must be retained in the first term. Writing and similarly for its derivatives,
Consequently
This is the fixed-number low-temperature Pauli susceptibility. The contribution is thermal broadening at fixed chemical potential; the contribution enforces fixed total number. Both are needed. If the density of states were instead defined with both spin directions included, the prefactor would be absorbed into that definition. Only the spin response has been calculated; no orbital magnetic response is included.
The expansion assumes , sufficient smoothness near the Fermi energy, and a temperature small compared with the energy scale over which changes or encounters a band edge. It does not apply unmodified at a singular density of states. For the ideal two-dimensional parabolic band, , so the leading Pauli response is temperature independent, consistently with the earlier state count.
An additive-looking energy expression does not by itself establish two noninteracting subsystems. Their allowed microstates must also form a Cartesian product of independently available states. Here the second label's allowed values depend on the first. The four allowed pairs and their energies are
The canonical partition function, with , is therefore
The conditional sum over is and depends on ; it cannot be pulled out as the partition function of an independent second subsystem. Summing independently over and all four values would invent four forbidden pairs and give eight states instead of four.
One can make the state labels independent by writing , but then contains a coupling between them. For genuinely additive independent energies, the difference between the and states would be independent of ; here it is . Hence the proposed and subsystems cannot be treated as noninteracting independent subsystems. The literal two-value reading of the PDF's endpoint notation has been used. If that notation were instead intended as shorthand for full angular-momentum multiplets, including every integer between the endpoints, the eight allowed states would give
The conclusion about the failure of independent-subsystem factorization is unchanged. The two state-counting conventions should not be mixed.
A nonzero superconducting energy gap suppresses the population of thermally excited quasiparticles. When , their Boltzmann factor produces an approximately activated electronic heat capacity,
where the prefactor varies algebraically rather than exponentially. For the rough estimate requested, neglect its change between the two quoted temperatures. Taking a ratio eliminates its unknown magnitude:
Therefore
The corresponding excitation energy is . The units of the two heat-capacity readings cancel in their ratio.
This is a heat-capacity activation estimate, not an exact determination of a gap from two data points. More generally, if , the same measurements give
For example, the low-temperature BCS theory form for a fully gapped isotropic superconductor has and would give about . The stated approximate data and constant-gap assumption support the simpler estimate; they do not specify a detailed density of states or heat-capacity prefactor. Here means the minimum quasiparticle excitation energy, rather than automatically twice that value.
Put and define the thermal de Broglie wavelength of species by
Ignoring the internal degrees of freedom as stipulated, each molecule's translational canonical partition function is . The two species do not interact, so their partition functions multiply; the treatment of indistinguishable particles requires a separate factorial for each species, not a factorial of the total particle number. Thus
Using and Stirling's approximation gives the extensive Helmholtz free energy
These are ideal gas expressions, valid for , with . The energy zero has been chosen so that separated CO and oxygen molecules have zero internal reference energy.
The given binding energy belongs to the formation of two carbon-dioxide molecules. Relative to the reference used in (a), the internal energy offset of one carbon-dioxide molecule is therefore , not . Its mass is and its thermal de Broglie wavelength is , where the subscript denotes .
The single-molecule canonical partition function is . For indistinguishable noninteracting molecules,
The corresponding Helmholtz free energy, using Stirling's approximation, is
The negative sign in the last term expresses the stabilizing binding energy and ensures that low temperature favors association.
At fixed temperature, volume and the numbers of all other species, the chemical potential is . For the combined noninteracting mixture, add the free energies from (a) and (b). Since the thermal de Broglie wavelengths are independent of particle number at fixed temperature, differentiation gives
Each logarithm has a dimensionless argument, and each chemical potential has units of energy per molecule. The binding offset must be kept consistently when comparing species.
Introduce an extent of reaction increasing in the dissociation direction. The allowed particle-number changes conserve both carbon and oxygen atoms:
At fixed temperature and volume, the resulting Helmholtz free energy change is
At an interior chemical equilibrium, both forward and backward changes are allowed, so the coefficient must vanish:
Equality of the three individual chemical potentials would be wrong: a reaction exchanges species in its stoichiometric proportions rather than molecule for molecule. Stability is also explicit here, since
when all three species are present. Thus the equilibrium composition minimizes the free energy along the conserved-composition constraint.
A phase transition is a qualitative change of thermodynamic phase as control parameters such as temperature, pressure or chemical potential are varied. A genuine equilibrium singularity is a nonanalyticity of the appropriate thermodynamic potential in the thermodynamic limit; finite systems generally show rounded crossovers instead.
An order parameter is a macroscopic quantity that distinguishes the phases. It often vanishes in a symmetric disordered phase and becomes nonzero after spontaneous symmetry breaking, although density-driven transitions need not have that simple symmetry interpretation. It can be a scalar, vector or tensor. At a first-order phase transition an appropriate first derivative of the free energy is discontinuous, and the order parameter commonly jumps; at a continuous phase transition the order parameter can approach zero continuously while a susceptibility or a higher derivative becomes singular.
Three examples are:
These examples also illustrate why an order parameter must reflect the physical distinction between phases rather than merely be any quantity that changes with temperature.
Write for the number of cells; this is fixed even though the particle number fluctuates. Approximate each position integral by the cell sum , evaluating the slowly varying intercell pair potential at cell centres. With the assumed single-occupancy restriction, the fixed- contribution becomes
An occupation configuration with selects an unordered set of occupied cells. There are exactly ways to assign the temporary particle labels to that set. They all have the same interaction energy, cancelling the prefactor .
Summing over all particle numbers is therefore equivalent to summing each cell occupation independently over :
The activity per cell, , is dimensionless. This is a lattice gas, with each cell either empty or occupied.
The exclusion of multiple occupation is an additional physical modeling assumption, explicitly imposed by the question. Making a cell small does not by itself forbid two point particles from entering it; a repulsive core or a dilute-occupancy approximation would be needed to justify that restriction starting from a general continuum pair potential. In the remaining parts it is part of the defined cell model.
In the one-mole Van der Waals equation, represents excluded volume: the volume available to molecular motion is , rather than . Subtracting in the denominator therefore increases the repulsive contribution to pressure. The term represents intermolecular attraction, which reduces the outward momentum flux at a wall and hence appears as the negative correction . The two minus signs do not mean that both physical effects lower pressure.
For a reversible isothermal process along a homogeneous gas branch with , the work done by the gas is
To find the internal energy change without guessing a caloric law, combine with the Helmholtz free energy Maxwell relation . This gives
Therefore
The attractive contribution becomes less negative as the gas expands: separating attracting particles requires energy. This differs from the ideal gas result at fixed temperature. The required heat is . Below the critical temperature, an equilibrium path crossing a liquid–gas coexistence region needs the equilibrium coexistence construction rather than the unstable homogeneous Van der Waals isotherm.