This is the webpage for the seminar I am running on statistical mechanics. You can join this seminar online on metauni, or in-person at the University of Melbourne. Post-seminar discussion happens in the #physics channel of the metauni discord. Click here to join.

Talks

  • 3/8/23 (notes, video) What is statistical mechanics? Hamiltonian systems and Liouville’s theorem.
  • 17/8/23 (notes, video) Entropy and the Boltzmann distribution.
  • 31/8/23 (notes, video) Stochastic processes.
  • 14/9/23 (notes) Stochastic differential equations.
  • 28/9/23 (notes) Discussing the paper “Statistical Mechanics of Learning from Examples” (1992) by H. S. Seung, H. Sompolinsky and N. Tishby

Texts

  • Pathria and Beale (2011) Statistical Mechanics
  • E. T. Jaynes (1957) “Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics” Physical Review 106.4 pp. 620-630
  • B. Øksendal (2013) “Stochastic differential equations” 6th ed.
  • J. H. Manton (2013) “A Primer on Stochastic Differential Geometry for Signal Processing” IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, 7.4 pp. 681–699 http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.0430
  • H. S. Seung, H. Sompolinsky and N. Tishby (1992) “Statistical Mechanics of Learning from Examples” Physical Review A 45.8 pp. 6056-6091