Physics 12c, Homework 1 Solutions

Problem 1 : Oscillator Degeneracy

We want to count the ways three harmonic oscillators can be excited to 3~
above the ground state, (thats three discrete excitations). Explicitly, the answer
is:
(3,0,0) with 3 permutations
(2,1,0) with 6 permutations
(1,1,1) with 1 permutation
For a total of 10. If you prefer we can get this directly. What follows is a
standard trick to do so: We have three excitation operators which we can put in
three buckets (the oscillator one, two or three). This means we symbolically have 3
E symbols and 2 B symbols (the Bs are walls that divide the buckets). Thus
the
 number of ways to excite is the number of permutations of EBEBE which is
5
which is
3
5!
= 10.
3! 2!
More generally, this method gives the answer to the question in how many ways
can M identical particles (= M units of energy in our problem), be put into N
boxes (= distributed among N oscillators). The answer is the number of different
+M 1)!
permutations of M E symbols and N-1 B symbols which is equal to (N
M !(N 1)! ,
and is exactly the same result as given by the method in the book.

Problem 2 : Heads or Tails

A coin flipped N times will show m heads with a probability
 
N
(1/2)N
m
Inserting N = 500 and m = 270 , we find our answer; If we use the Gaussian
approximation, the variance is N/4 , and
2

e2(mN/2) /N
P (m) = p
N/2
so P (270) = 7 103 (Can also use Stirlings approx.).
1

Problem 3 : Drunken Walk

The probability to random walk R to the right and L to the left is :


R+L
(1/2)R+L
P (R, L) =
R
or putting N = R + L , the number of steps, and x = R L , the final position,


N
P (x, N ) =
2N
x + N/2
Thus the probability for two random walks to terminate at the same location
after N steps is :
P
2
P = N
x=N P (x, N ) ,

2
P
N
P = x
4N ,
x + N/2
 2
P
N
P = 4N N
,
m=0 m
 
2N
P = 4N
.
N

Problem 4 : Random walk in 2 and 3 dimensions.

Recall the calculation for 1 dimension. The Root Mean Square displacement
from the origin after N steps is
q
rms
2 >,
DN < DN
where DN is the displacement from the origin after N steps. In class we showed
that < D1 >2 = l2 , and
<

2
DN

(DN 1 + l)2 + (DN 1 l)2

2
2
>=<
>=< DN
1 > +l ,
2

2
so that < DN
>= N l2 . This immediately generalizes to random walk in d dimensions, provided one can walk in the direction of coordinate axes only.
Then we have
d
X
2
DN =
(D( i))2N .
i=1

where Di is the distance traveled in the i th direction. Now at every step we have
a choice of the direction in which to go, and we will assume that all of them are
equally probable, and of equal length l. there is 1/d probability to go in any one
of them, so:
2

<

2
DN

1X
[(Di )N 1 + l]2 + [(Di )N 1 l]2 X
d
2
2
>=
=1 <
+ (Dj )2N1 >=< DN
1 > +l
d i
2
j6=i

2
2
Also, < D1 >= l . Thus, the RMS deviation from the origin after N steps in
N l in any number of dimensions.

Problem 5 : Birthdays
a )
Let the probability that two or more people out of a group of N have the same
birthday be p. Then p = 1 q, where q is probability of all the people having
distinct birthdays.
We count the total number of possible events DN , where D = 365. The number
D!
of cases all people have distinct birthdays is (DN
)! , so
p=1

D!
DN .
(D N )!

b )
The task is to find N such that p(N ) 21 . Since:
p=1

D!
DN
(D N )!

is 0 to the first order in N/D, we need to keep these terms. then

D!
D
DN (
)DN +1/2 eN Eq.A
(D N )!
DN
using Stirlings approx, which is valid when both D, and D N are large. We
will have to check the second assumption a-posteriori We want this quantity to be
approx. 1/2. Taking a logarithm:
DN
ln2 (D N + 1/2) ln(
)N
D
1
(D N )[N/D (N/D)2 + . . .] N
2
2
= (1/2)N /D + . . .
Thus,
N

2D ln 2 22.

It is clear that our approximation of D N being large was valid. If we now plug
N = 22 into the equation A above we get 0.48 for p. Thus we actually need a
larger N . Usine N = 23 gives p = 0.51. Thus 23 is the number of people for which
the probability of two or more coincident birthdays is 1/2.
3

c )
Whats the probability that 100 people all have different birthdays ?
Using the Stirlings approximation:
q(N = 100) (

D
)DN eN 3 107
DN

Problem 6
A neutrino detector obtains a small background signal of = 1count/day.
Then,after a T = 2 yrs long experiments the physicists observe a signal of 3 events
in one hour. Is this a statistical fluctuation? Let p be the probability of observing
at least 3 events in t = 1hr. Probability P that the rate exceeds two events in
one hour in the duration of experiment is:
P = 1 Q,
where Q is probability that the rate never does exceed 2/hr:
T

Q = (1 p) t .
Detection of background neutrinos at such a small rate is governed by a Poisson
distribution. Probability of obtaining k events in time t due to random fluctuations is given by
t
ke
P (k; t, ) = (t)
k!
Probability of obtaining at least rate k0 is
p = P (k0 ; t, ) =

ke

(t)

k!

kk0

=1

X
k<k0

ke

(t)

k!

For k0 = 3 in t = 1 hour the probability of obtaining at least k0 events is1.2105 .

Finally, we find P = 1 (1 105 )17520 = 0.21 This is fairly large, so the chance
that this is a signature of a supernovae, as opposed to background fluctuations is
small.

Problem 7
We have here a binomial distribution with the probability p = 0.6 of success
(Clinton winning the election). If we sample 10 people, the probability that all of
them would vote for Bush is:
P10 = (1 p)10
4

Similarly the probability that 9 of the 10 people would vote for him is :
 
10
P9 =
p(1 p)9
9
etc. The probability that our poll will indicate that Bush will win is:
P =

k10
X

Pk

k>5

We can easily evaluate this:

P =

1623424
= 0.166239
9765625

Now to estimate the probability that a poll of 1000 people will indicate that
Bush will win The standard deviation for a binomial distributions is:
p
p
= N pq = N p(1 p) 15.5
For our poll to indicate that Bush will win, we would need 500+ votes for this
= 6.5 away from the expected value
candidate. Thats more than roughly 500400
15.5
of 400 votes.
We can roughly approximate the distribution of votes for Bush as a gaussian
with mean = 400 and standard deviation = 15.5 Then the probability of the
poll being in favor of Bush is 0 to much better than 1 part in 1010 :
Z +
(x)2
1

e 22 4.016 1011
2 2
+6.5