Advanced Computational Methods in Condensed Matter Physics - PHYS 790A - Spring 2026
Class meetings:
Tuesdays, 17:00-19:30 online (zoom), starting 2026-01-13 (contact instructor for link)
Instructor: Professor A. Glatz
Office: 217 La Tourette
Office hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 12:15-13:15 or by appointment (just send an email).
Grading: Weighted according to 20% lecture attendence, 20% first task, 20% midterm task, and 40% final project.
Midterm exam: week of March 23, 2026.
Final project report: due April 28th, 2026.
(will be assigned in the first half of April.)
Syllabus: PDF
Lectures
| date | ||
| Overview | 2026-01-13 | |
| Lecture 1 Floating point arithmetic, Round-off errors, Summation | PDF + demo code: geometric series + demo code: Kahan summation | January 2026 |
| Lecture 2 Linear systems | January 2026 | |
| Lecture 3 numerical integration, root finding | PDF + demo code: numerical integration | January 2026 |
Final Projects
TBA To be presented on April 28th or 30th, 2026 at 17:00 on zoom. Please prepare a 20 minutes presentation explaining the physical model, implementation, and results of the simulations.
Literature suggestions
see syllabus
additional online resources:
- Lecture Notes on Numerical Analysis by Peter J. Olver (University of Minnesota): www.math.umn.edu/~olver/num.html
- Lectures on Numerical Analysis by Dennis Deturck and Herbert S. Wilf (University of Pennsylvania): www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/DeturckWilf.pdf
- COMPUTATIONAL PHYSICS by Morten Hjorth-Jensen (University of Oslo): link
- Computational Physics by Richard Fitzpatrick (The University of Texas at Austin): farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/329/329.html
- Numerical Recipes in C: apps.nrbook.com/c/