Welcome to CSI 780 / PHYS 613, Fall 2007
Computational Physics and Applications
Instructor:
Estela Blaisten-Barojas
E-mail:blaisten-at-gmu.edu, Office: Research I, office 371, Phone: 993-1988.
CSI 780/PHYS 613 is one of the core science courses of the
Computational Physics,
Computational Materials and Chemical Science,
Space Sciences, and
Computational Chemistry
disciplines in the doctoral program in Computational Sciences and
Informatics. The course is also an alternative core course of the Master
in Physics
and Astronomy and it is an elective course of the Master in Chemistry.
This server will expand as the semester progresses.
Textbooks and Course Materials
The tentative textbook for this course is Computational Physics
by Paul DeVries, John Wiley & Sons (1994).
Not required, but recommended to go along with the above textbook is
Computational Physics
by Nicholas J. Giordano, Prentice Hall (1997).
Extra reference for "tools to coding" could be found in:
Theme: Dynamical Systems
Structure of the course:
This is a hands-on course where there will be as little lecturing as possible.
The last 3 chapters of the Computational Physics textbook will be mostly worked out
independently by each student from 6:30-7:00pm or beyond when necessary. Each student
will be responsible to cover the 3 chapters and to do the exercises contained therein.
A report per chapter showing the achievements
accomplished by every student will be required. Every report should be structured according to the
following suggested scheme:
1) Title
2) Abstract
3) Introduction to the subject
4) Model and Methods
5) Results of exercises and any extra finding of your own.
6) Conclusions and Observations
The lectures will supplement the textbook by providing an introduction to the physical concepts
involved in various research areas where numerical methods are fundamental. The general theme will
be statistical mechanics and ways to calculate average values of measurable quantities.
Deterministic methods involving classical dynamics will be covered including an introduction
to lattice dynamics and chaos. These methods will be presented to calculate
thermodynamic quantities. Two methods of entirely stochastic nature, the Monte Carlo method
and the Brownian dynamics will be treated as well. Percolation, growth, and aggregation
processes will serve as examples
Four (or three for masters students) projects will be assigned as homework from material discussed in the lectures.
A report will be due for each project.
Towards the end of November, teams of students will be formed. Each team will be assigned to review
thoroughly one of the projects already done, incorporate material from the textbook, present a
consolidated report which will be posted in the internet , and prepare an oral presentation much in
the same way as done in a scientific symposium.
Evaluation:
- 40% of the final grade from the work acquired through the homework on the textbook exercises.
- 40% of the final grade from the projects left during the lectures as
homework.
- 20% of final grade acquired by class participation and extra work including the final oral
presentation.
- no partial and final exams.
Computational Resources
The CDS Lab with Linux workstations is available for use in this class.
This lab is science.gmu.edu, where we have the library IMSL. To use it
run the script /usr/local/bin/imsl_script .
2) The Intel Fortran compiler (ifort your_code.f90 in free format)
and the GNU C compiler (gcc your_code.c) are available.The Portland
Group compilers are also available (pgf90 your_code.f).
3) A sample makefile follows:
In fortran:
$F90 $F90FLAGS -o executable_name.exe your_code.f90 $LINK_F90_SMP
In C:
Shared Library
$CC $CFLAGS your_code.c -o executable_name.exe $LINK_CNL
Static Library
$CC $CFLAGS your_code.c -o executable_name.exe $LINK_CNL_STATIC
Resources
Most computational work will be done in the linux cluster in Research I, room 249.
Other Resources
