Fermi–Dirac gases

Abstract

We return now to the main stream of the book, and to the basic statistical properties of ideal gases as introduced in Chapter 5. Of the three types of statistics we have so far discussed only the classical limit, corresponding to Maxwell—Boltzmann gases. In the next two chapters so-called ‘quantum statistics’ is discussed, that is statistics where the antisymmetric (Fermi—Dirac) or the symmetric (Bose—Einstein) nature of the wavefunction plays a significant role.