Statistical mechanics energy levels

Statistical mechanics gives the relation between microscopic information such as quantum mechanical energy levels and macroscopic properties. Some important statistical mechanical concepts and results are summarized in Appendix A. Here we will briefly review one central result the Boltzmann distribution for thermal equilibrium. 

The main objective of statistical mechanics is to calculate macroscopic (thermodynamic) properties from a knowledge of microscopic information like quantum mechanical energy levels. The purpose of the present appendix is merely to present a selection1 of the results that are most relevant in the context of reaction dynamics. 

A major success of statistical mechanics is the ability to predict the thermodynamic properties of gases and simple solids from quantum mechanical energy levels. Monatomic gases have translational freedom, which we have treated by using the particle-in-a-box model. Diatomic gases also have vibrational freedom, which we have treated by using the harmonic oscillator model, and rotational freedom, for which we used the rigid-rotor model. The atoms in simple solids can be treated by the Einstein model. More complex systems can require more sophisticated treatments of coupled vibrations or internal rotations or electronic excitations. But these simple models provide a microscopic interpretation of temperature and heat capacity in Chapter 12, and they predict chemical reaction equilibria in Chapter 13, and kinetics in Chapter 19. 

From statistical mechanics, discussed later in this text, one can directly obtain heat capacities of certain substances from information about the quantum mechanical energy levels of the gas particles. However, for temperature ranges from about 300 K to at least 1000 K higher, direct calorimetric measurements have shown very slight variation in the heat capacities of monatomic gases with temperature. Molecular gases tend to show a dependence on temperature that can often be well represented by a truncated power series expansion (see Appendix A) of the heat capacity per mole ... 

Conservation laws at a microscopic level of molecular interactions play an important role. In particular, energy as a conserved variable plays a central role in statistical mechanics. Another important concept for equilibrium systems is the law of detailed balance. Molecular motion can be viewed as a sequence of collisions, each of which is akin to a reaction. Most often it is the momentum, energy and angrilar momentum of each of the constituents that is changed during a collision if the molecular structure is altered, one has a chemical reaction. The law of detailed balance implies that, in equilibrium, the number of each reaction in the forward direction is the same as that in the reverse direction i.e. each microscopic reaction is in equilibrium. This is a consequence of the time reversal syimnetry of mechanics. 

Rushbrooke G 1940 On the statistical mechanics of assemblies whose energy-levels depend on temperature Trans. Faraday Soc. 36 1055... 

The Boltzmann distribution is fundamental to statistical mechanics. The Boltzmann distribution is derived by maximising the entropy of the system (in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics) subject to the constraints on the system. Let us consider a system containing N particles (atoms or molecules) such that the energy levels of the... 

In Chapter 2, a brief discussion of statistical mechanics was presented. Statistical mechanics provides, in theory, a means for determining physical properties that are associated with not one molecule at one geometry, but rather, a macroscopic sample of the bulk liquid, solid, and so on. This is the net result of the properties of many molecules in many conformations, energy states, and the like. In practice, the difficult part of this process is not the statistical mechanics, but obtaining all the information about possible energy levels, conformations, and so on. Molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations are two methods for obtaining this information... 

In the previous section we saw on an example the main steps of a standard statistical mechanical description of an interface. First, we introduce a Hamiltonian describing the interaction between particles. In principle this Hamiltonian is known from the model introduced at a microscopic level. Then we calculate the free energy and the interfacial structure via some approximations. In principle, this approach requires us to explore the overall phase space which is a manifold of dimension 6N equal to the number of degrees of freedom for the total number of particles, N, in the system. 

The importance of solvation on reaction surfaces is evident in striking medium dependence of reaction rates, particularly for polar reactions, and in variations of product distributions as for methyl formate discussed above and of relative reactivities (18,26). Thus, in order to obtain a molecular level understanding of the influence of solvation on the energetics and courses of reactions, we have carried out statistical mechanics simulations that have yielded free energy of activation profiles (30) for several organic reactions in solution (11.18.19.31. ... 

We finish this chapter by repeating some of the most important results. If we have detailed knowledge of the energy levels for an ensemble of particles (remember that statistical mechanics always operates on the basis of large numbers) it is possible to... 

The theory of electron-transfer reactions presented in Chapter 6 was mainly based on classical statistical mechanics. While this treatment is reasonable for the reorganization of the outer sphere, the inner-sphere modes must strictly be treated by quantum mechanics. It is well known from infrared spectroscopy that molecular vibrational modes possess a discrete energy spectrum, and that at room temperature the spacing of these levels is usually larger than the thermal energy kT. Therefore we will reconsider electron-transfer reactions from a quantum-mechanical viewpoint that was first advanced by Levich and Dogonadze [1]. In this course we will rederive several of, the results of Chapter 6, show under which conditions they are valid, and obtain generalizations that account for the quantum nature of the inner-sphere modes. By necessity this chapter contains more mathematics than the others, but the calculations axe not particularly difficult. Readers who are not interested in the mathematical details can turn to the summary presented in Section 6. 

While details of the solution of the quantum mechanical eigenvalue problem for specific molecules will not be explicitly considered in this book, we will introduce various conventions that are used in making quantum calculations of molecular energy levels. It is important to note that knowledge of energy levels will make it possible to calculate thermal properties of molecules using the methods of statistical mechanics (for examples, see Chapter4). Within approximation procedures to be discussed in later chapters, a similar statement applies to the rates of chemical reactions. 

We note that the integral over the energetically allowed phase space— that is, the classical level density (97)—was found in Fig. 20 to be in excellent agreement with the quantum-mechanical level density. This finding indicates that there is a valid correspondence between the quantum-mechanical two-state system and its classical mapping representation. A similar conclusion was drawn in a recent smdy of a mapped two-state problem, which focused on the Lyapunov exponents and the energy level statistics of the system [124, 235]. 

In the classical high-temperature limit, kBT hv, where kB is the Boltzmann constant, and hv is the spacing of the quantum-mechanical harmonic oscillator energy levels. If this condition is fulfilled, the energy levels may be considered as continuous, and Boltzmann statistics apply. The corresponding distribution is... 

The most accurate theories of reaction rates come from statistical mechanics. These theories allow one to write the partition function for molecules and thus to formulate a quantitative description of rates. Rate expressions for many homogeneous elementary reaction steps come from these calculations, which use quantum mechanics to calculate the energy levels of molecules and potential energy surfaces over which molecules travel in the transition between reactants and products. These theories give... 

By contrast, few such calculations have as yet been made for diffusional problems. Much more significantly, the experimental observables of rate coefficient or survival (recombination) probability can be measured very much less accurately than can energy levels. A detailed comparison of experimental observations and theoretical predictions must be restricted by the experimental accuracy attainable. This very limitation probably explains why no unambiguous experimental assignment of a many-body effect has yet been made in the field of reaction kinetics in solution, even over picosecond timescale. Necessarily, there are good reasons to anticipate their occurrence. At this stage, all that can be done is to estimate the importance of such effects and include them in an analysis of experimental results. Perhaps a comparison of theoretical calculations and Monte Carlo or molecular dynamics simulations would be the best that could be hoped for at this moment (rather like, though less satisfactory than, the current position in the development of statistical mechanical theories of liquids). Nevertheless, there remains a clear need for careful experiments, which may reveal such effects as discussed in the remainder of much of this volume. 

In practice, the energy spacings Aei type (if sufficiently small) and temperature T (if sufficiently high) may allow use of classical high-T/continuum approximations to the actual quantum level distribution, by replacing the discrete quantum summation (13.78) with a classical integral. [For further discussion, see D. A. McQuarrie. Statistical Mechanics (Harper Row, New York, 1976).]... 

---