An ideal Fermi gas under uniform gravity

Abstract

We consider an ideal Fermi gas in a container subject to a uniform gravitational field at absolute zero temperature. Under a semiclassical approximation, we examine the density profile of the particles and derive an expression for the chemical potential. A critical value of the chemical potential separates the weak- and strong-gravity regimes, and the kinetic and potential energies of the Fermi gas are determined in both regimes.

15 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (2)

• The physics of neutron stars
• Thermodynamics of Quantum Ultra-cold Neutron Gas under Gravity of The Earth