Table of Contents

Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Quantum scattering with a spherically symmetric potential; Part I. Electronic Structure Calculations: 3. The variational method for the Schrödinger equation; 4. The Hartree-Fock method; 5. Density functional theory; 6. Solving the Schrödinger equation in periodic solids: Part II. Simulations with Classical and Quantum Degrees of Freedom: 7. Classical statistical mechanics; 8. Molecular dynamics simulations; 9. Quantum molecular dynamics; 10. The Monte Carlo method; 11. Transfer matrix methods; 12. Quantum Monte Carlo methods; 13. Computational methods for lattice field theories; 14. High performance computing and parallelism; Appendices; References.

Promotional Information

This book describes computational methods used in theoretical physics with emphasis on condensed matter applications.

Reviews

"The growing importance of computational physics to physics research as a whole will depend not only on increasingly powerful computers, but also on the continuing development of algorithms and numerical techniques for putting these machines to use. Furthermore, physics departments will need to augment their curricula to provide students with the skills needed to perform research using computers....In Computational Physics, Joseph M. Thijssen has produced a book that is well suited to meeting these needs....This book makes it easier to approach a new topic and encourages the reader to consider a modular approach when writing programs." Physics Today