ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the applications involving finite temperature theories. Technically, the grand canonical partition function is easiest to handle and in general it is the one used for the analysis of the thermodynamical properties. In fact, for properties like the energy and the specific heat of the gas this is justified because in the thermodynamical limit the different ensembles are known to give the same answer. The chapter uses the grand canonical ensemble to obtain properties like critical temperature, energy and specific heat. It summarizes the grand canonical description of ideal Bose gases trapped by magnetic fields and describes the formulation of Bose-Einstein condensation as a symmetry-breaking phenomenon.