Computational physics

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This subfield focuses on the development of algorithms and data structures for solving physical problems, such as simulating the behavior of particles or modeling fluid dynamics.

Mathematical Methods: This includes calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, probability theory, and statistics, which are crucial for computational physics applications.
Computer Science Fundamentals: This involves computer architecture, operation systems, programming languages, and data structures.
Numerical Methods: This covers interpolation, approximate differentiation and integration, numerical linear algebra, Monte-Carlo methods, optimization techniques, and numerical solution of non-linear equations.
Parallel Computation: This involves algorithms that utilize parallel processing on supercomputers, clusters, or grids to solve computationally-demanding problems more efficiently.
Object-Oriented Programming: This programming approach supports encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. It is crucial to computational physics software design to create efficient, maintainable, and reusable code.
Simulation Techniques: This involves Monte-Carlo simulations, molecular dynamics, and other statistical mechanics simulations to simulate complex physical systems.
Computational Fluid Dynamics: This field of study involves using computational methods to study and analyze fluid mechanics and related problems.
High-Performance Computing: This is the use of advanced hardware and software in complex simulations that require massive computing power.
Visualization: This involves creating graphical representations of data to analyze large data sets, explore complex systems, and make them more accessible to others.
Quantum Computing: This involves studying computation with quantum computers and quantum algorithms to develop new ways of simulating physical systems.
Molecular dynamics: Simulation of molecular motion using numerical integration algorithms for the equations of motion of classical mechanics.
Monte Carlo Methods: A broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to compute numerical results.
Finite Element Method (FEM): Used to approximately solve differential equations in physics such as structural analysis, heat transfer, fluid flow, and electromagnetic potential.
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD): Numerical simulation of fluid motion and flow, often involving the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid motion.
Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM): A technique for simulating fluid flow, based on simulating the motion of fluid particles on a grid.
Molecular dynamics simulations of biological systems: Computational techniques for simulating the movements of biological molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids.
Density Functional Theory (DFT): Method for solving the many-body Schrödinger equation of quantum mechanics using the density of electrons.
Computational astrophysics: Application of computational techniques to problems in astrophysics and cosmology, such as modeling the formation of galaxies or simulating the behavior of black holes.
High-performance computing: The use of computer hardware and software to solve complex problems in physics quickly and efficiently.
Quantum Monte Carlo: A family of methods for solving problems in quantum mechanics using Monte Carlo methods.
Numerical relativity: Using numerical analysis and computational techniques to simulate the behavior of gravitational systems, including black holes and other dense objects.
Quantum simulation: Using computational systems to model quantum mechanical phenomena or simulate quantum mechanical systems.
Computational materials science: The use of computational methods to predict the properties of materials, including the behavior of atoms and molecules and the structure of materials.
Computational optics: The use of computational methods to simulate the behavior of electromagnetic radiation, including light and other forms of radiation.
Computational biophysics: The use of computational methods to understand the behavior of biological systems, including the simulation of protein folding and genetic interactions.
- "Computational physics is the study and implementation of numerical analysis to solve problems in physics."
- "Historically, computational physics was the first application of modern computers in science..."
- "...and is now a subset of computational science."
- "It is sometimes regarded as a subdiscipline (or offshoot) of theoretical physics..."
- "...but others consider it an intermediate branch between theoretical and experimental physics — an area of study which supplements both theory and experiment."
- "...the study and implementation of numerical analysis to solve problems in physics."
- "The study and implementation of numerical analysis to solve problems in physics."
- "Historically, computational physics was the first application of modern computers in science..."
- "...is now a subset of computational science."
- "...sometimes regarded as a subdiscipline (or offshoot) of theoretical physics..."
- "...an area of study which supplements both theory and experiment."
- "The study and implementation of numerical analysis to solve problems in physics."
- "The study and implementation of numerical analysis to solve problems in physics."
- "The first application of modern computers in science..."
- "...subset of computational science."
- "...an intermediate branch between theoretical and experimental physics..."
- "...a subdiscipline (or offshoot) of theoretical physics..."
- "...an intermediate branch between theoretical and experimental physics..."
- "The first application of modern computers in science..."
- "The first application of modern computers in science..."