Overview

Semiconductor heterojunctions and nanostructures consist of large numbers of identical particles such as electrons, atoms, holes, and harmonic oscillators. In such cases, it is impossible to try to trace the motion of each individual particle. An alternative way of looking at these large numbers of particles is to settle for knowing averages of relevant dynamical quantities over the entire range of possible system configurations. This leads to the construction of the macroscopic properties of the system and to an understanding of how energy, velocity, and momentum are distributed among the particles that form the system. The branch of physics that addresses the distribution function of a system links the microscopic properties of the system to its macroscopic domains and is called statistical mechanics. For physical systems such as semiconductor materials, there are constraints associated with any distribution function. For example, the number of particles is finite, or the total energy of the system is constant. These constraints usually alter the probabilities associated with the possible system configurations.

The techniques of statistical mechanics have been applied to a variety of physical problems in many fields of study, including those involving gases, liquids, polymers, metals, semiconductors, transport theory, DNA, adsorption, spectroscopy, and optical and electrical properties of solids. Statistical thermodynamics is usually applied to a system in equilibrium. This branch of statistical mechanics links thermodynamics and molecular physics. Thermodynamics, on the other hand, provides connections between the properties of the system without supplying any information about the magnitude of any...