Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-l] distinguishability



Thanks for John's answer to question 1.

Regarding question 2, I see that I didn't word it properly. I'll try again:

2. Is there such a thing as an ideal gas of identical but distinguishable quantum particles?

As a specific example, suppose we are talking about one million atoms of helium-4 and all atoms have their electrons filling the 1s orbital. Thus all atoms are identical. But put these atoms in a cubical box (that is otherwise empty) measuring 100 meters on a side. It seems like each atom will have on average a cubic meter to itself, so I can distinguish atoms (at least for some time) by saying there's one in that cubic meter, one in that cubic meter, etc.

To put question 2 another way, does anything special happen when D >>> L > R where L is the thermal de Broglie length, R is the size of a gas particle, and D is the average distance between gas particles? I put >>> to mean hugely bigger, not just the ordinary bigness of STP. Special might mean the Sackur-Tetrode equation changes, for example.

---
Carl E Mungan, Assoc Prof of Physics 410-293-6680 (O) -3729 (F)
Naval Academy Stop 9c, 572C Holloway Rd, Annapolis MD 21402-1363
mailto:mungan@usna.edu http://usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/