PHZ3400: Midterm Review

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Folks,

I noticed that both the lecture notes and the homework solutions related to ferromagnetism and the Ising model remain incomplete. The upcoming make-up midterm exam will have questions on the following:

• spontaneous symmetry breaking
• thermodynamic limit
• domain wall argument for the relaxation time below Tc
• Curie temperature
• effects of an external symmetry-breaking field

In addition, you need to know the following:

• Concept of Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics
• the corresponding distribution functions
• how this affects finite temperature properties

Also, both for vibrations and quantum electrons:

• quantization of wave-vectors
• how to go from a sum over k to an integral in the limit L->infinity
• how to calculate the Debye temperature and the Fermi temperature

Again, all derivations given in class must be familiar, and the test will very effectively determine if you know the material or not. If any of the above is not familiar, is confusing, and you cannot reproduce the derivations presented in class (without looking at the notes!), then you are not well prepared for this test.

On the original mid-term exam it became very clear that the majority of people were not sufficiently familiar with the material/derivations presented in class. If this does not change, then the make-up exam will have a similar outcome. I also want to make it abundantly clear to you all that those who have less then 50% on the tests will not pass this class!

So hit the books and make a serious effort to catch up on what you missed on the original mid-term. if you do better on the make up midterm, I will simply scratch (eliminate) your grade from the original midterm and replaced it with the improved one.

Good luck!

Vlad

See Also

• Midterm Solution
• [Symmetry Breaking]