Bücher von Dieter W. Heermann

Appropriately for a book having the title "e;Computer Simulation Methods in Theoretical Physics"e;, this book begins with a disclai- mer. It does not and cannot give a complete introduction to simu- lational physics. This exciting field is too new and is expanding too rapidly for even an attempt to be made. The intention here is to present a selection of fundamental techniques that are now being widely applied in many areas of physics, mathematics, chem- istry and biology. It is worth noting that the methods are not only applicable in physics. They have been successfully used in other sciences, showing their great flexibility and power. This book has two main chapters (Chaps. 3 and 4) dealing with deterministic and stochastic computer simulation methods. Under the heading "e;deterministic"e; are collected methods involving classical dynamics, i.e. classical equations of motion, which have become known as the molecular dynamics simulation method. The se- cond main chapter deals with methods that are partly or entirely of a stochastic nature. These include Brownian dynamics and the Monte Carlo method. To aid understanding of the material and to develop intuition, problems are included at the end of each chapter. Upon a first reading, the reader is advised to skip Chapter 2, which is a general introduction to computer simUlation methods.

In addition to the traditional numerical methods, such as matrix inversions and the like, a whole new field of computational techniques has come to assume central importance, namely the numerical simulation methods.

This book deals with the computer simulation of many-body systems in condensed-matter physics and related fields of physics, chemistry and beyond. It describes the theoretical background to several variants of these Monte Carlo methods.