[2003SM/LNP-09] Lecture-09--Canonical Ensemble

In this lecture canonical ensemble and canonical partition function are introduced. This topic has a central place in equilibrium statistical mechanics. This ensemble describes the microstates of a system in equilibrium with a heat bath at temperature T . The probability of a microstate having energy E is proportional to $exp(−βE)$ where $ β = kT $ and k is Boltzmann constant.