Posted by Steve Simon on January 28, 2014, 3:46 pm, in reply to "Re: Debye Heat Capacity"
Yes. Summing over all N modes is summing over the motion of all N particles! (and summing over all 3N modes sums over all N particles moving in all 3 possible directions).
We will discuss this later in the term as well, but it should not surprise us. When you decompose motion into normal modes, if you have N particles, you should get N normal modes. You can describe the motion either in terms of the N particle coordinates, or in terms of the amplitudes of the N normal modes. It is just a basis change between the two.
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