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European Journal of Physics

Indistinguishability, symmetrisation and maximum entropy

Walter T. Grandy

Published Apr 1, 1981• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It is demonstrated that the distributions over single-particle states for Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein, and Fermi-Dirac statistics describing N non-interacting identical particles follow directly from the principle of maximum entropy. It is seen that the notions of indistinguishability and coarse graining are secondary, if not irrelevant. A detailed examination of the structure of the Boltzmann limit is provided.

DOI
10.1088/0143-0807/2/2/005

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It is demonstrated that the distributions over single-particle states for Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein, and Fermi-Dirac statistics describing N non-interacting identical particles follow directly from the principle of maximum entropy. It is seen that the notions of indistinguishability and coarse graining are secondary, if not irrelevant. A detailed examination of the structure of the Boltzmann limit is provided.
We derive Bose-Einstein statistics and Fermi-Dirac statistics by Principle of Maximum Entropy applied to two families of entropy functions different from the Boltzmann-Gibbs-Shannon entropy. These entropy functions are identified with special cases of modified Naudts' ϕϕϕ-entropy.
In the classical mechanical limit in which quantum cells of volume (2πħ)2 are reduced to points in phase space, the Bose and Fermi distributions are shown to approach the Boltzmann distribution. This limit is a continuous limit and therefore does not alter the indistinguishability of bosons (fermions) which is defined in terms of a discontinuous permutation symmetry of the density operator and Hamiltonian for the system. This means that the classical particles which correspond to the identical boson (fermions) remain indistinguishable. In the same limit, the partition function for N identical bosons approaches (2πħ)−3N (N!)−1 f. f d3r1 d3p1…d3rN d3pN exp (–βH)  Zc. The two factors, (2πħ)−3N and (N!)−1 which are often added in an ad hoc manner in many books on statistical mechanics, are thus derived from first principles. In the classical statistical limit in which the number density n and the reciprocal temperature β become small, the quantum statistical distributions also approach the Boltzmann distribution. This is shown by examining the chemical potential μ as a function of n and β. The classical approximation is valid if the thermal de Broglie wavelength is much shorter than the interparticle distance irrespective of any interparticle interaction.
In classical physics, the question whether there are subsets of identical particles is not particularly interesting. After all, whether the particles are identical or not, we can always track each of them at any time. As we shall see, in quantum mechanics identical particles are indistinguishable because we cannot track trajectories, and this fact induces some important symmetry properties on the total wave function describing the system of particles under consideration. Generally speaking, a symmetry is an effect of an invariance, that is, the system does not change if one effects certain transformations (see Ch. 8). In this case, the system is not modified under exchange of two identical particles. Moreover, such a symmetry yields a most interesting connection between spin and statistics. After a short introduction to the significance of statistics in quantum mechanics (in Sec. 7.1), we define the permutation operator and discuss the symmetry properties of the wave function of N identical particles (Sec. 7.2). In Sec. 7.3 we show that quantum particles, differently from classical particles (that obey the Maxwell–Boltzmann statistics), may be subject to two different statistics, namely the Fermi–Dirac statistics for fermions and the Bose–Einstein statistics for bosons. In Sec. 7.4 we treat the so-called exchange interaction and, finally, in Sec. 7.5 we consider some applications of the two statistics. Statistics and quantum mechanics Identical particles are those particles whose Hamiltonian is symmetric under exchange of one particle with the other.
In a previous work [Phys. Rev. E 48, 4263 (1993)] we have derived a nonlinear one-dimensional kinetic equation for the distribution function of particles obeying an exclusion principle. In the present work, on the same grounds, we extend this kinetics to D-dimensional continuous or discrete space, in order to study the distribution function of particles obeying a generalized exclusion-inclusion Pauli principle (EIP). This exclusion or inclusion principle is introduced into the classical transition rates by means of an inhibition or an enhancement factor, which contains a parameter \ensuremath{\kappa}, whose values range between -1 and +1 and can balance the effect of the full or partial validity of EIP. After deriving the kinetic equation we obtain a general expression of the stationary distribution function, depending on the value we give to the parameter \ensuremath{\kappa}. When we limit ourselves to Brownian particles, we derive exactly for \ensuremath{\kappa}=-1 the Fermi-Dirac (FD) distribution, for \ensuremath{\kappa}=0 the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, and for \ensuremath{\kappa}=1 the Bose-Einstein (BE) distribution. When \ensuremath{\kappa} assumes an intermediate value, except zero, between the extreme values -1 and +1, we obtain statistical distributions different from the FD and BE ones. We attribute to the parameter \ensuremath{\kappa} the meaning of the degree of indistinguishability of identical particles, the degree of antisymmetrization, or the symmetrization of the wave function of the particle system.
In the previous chapters, the focus was on systems of particles following the law of classical mechanics. Of course, this was mainly done within the framework of classical mechanics but a quantum description of individual (discretised) states was also used, while assuming distinguishability of the particles (for instance, particles located at the nodes of a lattice (spin system, quantum harmonic oscillators,) ). The present chapter as well as Chapters 7 and 8 are dedicated to the study of statistical physics in a fully quantum framework. The first obstacle encountered by a quantum approach is the impossibility to define a quantum phase space (in which the ergodic hypothesis would hold for instance). This problem is inherent to quantum mechanics: because of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, one cannot define both the momentum and the position of a particle. Besides, statistical physics considers systems made of a large number of particles, a priori in mutual interaction. In classical physics, model situations for which the interactions between the constituents of the system are neglected can be studied. In quantum mechanics, the indistinguishability of identical particles makes the study of the problem in the absence of interaction already difficult: even for non-interacting particles, the symmetrisation (or antisymmetrisation) of the wave function of https://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> N https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href=" https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781003272427/5ca4d37a-9786-43a3-8b38-8fa9eb3d1a19/content/math_25.tif "/> identical particles induces correlations which have non-trivial thermodynamical effects such as the existence of a “Fermi sea” for fermions (see Section 8.1 ) or the Bose–Einstein condensation phenomenon for bosons (see Section 7.4 ). The present chapter addresses these two points consecutively.