Research in the
Needs/Towler groups

THEORY OF CONDENSED MATTER GROUP
CAVENDISH LABORATORY
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
ENGLAND

"Calculating the electronic properties of matter using random numbers"

Richard Needs, Mike Towler, Pablo López Ríos, Jian Sun, Pascal Bugnion, Bartomeu Monserrat-Sanchez, Jonathan Lloyd-Williams and (at Lancaster) Neil Drummond

Many-body quantum theory provides the key ideas for understanding the behaviour of materials at the level of the electrons which bind the atoms together. Describing the complex behaviour of materials at the atomic level requires a sophisticated description of the correlated motion of the electrons, which can be achieved using ab initio computational methods. The quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) method has many attractive features for probing the electronic properties of real systems. It is an explicitly many-body method which takes electron correlation into account from the outset. It is capable of giving highly accurate results while at the same time exhibiting a favourable scaling of computational cost with system size. Over the last 20 years, our group has been researching QMC methods and we have created a powerful, general computer program - CASINO - to carry them out. This research and the code are described on these pages. Enjoy!

NOTE : This page maintained for the TCM QMC group by Mike Towler. All suggestions and complaints to mdt26 at cam.ac.uk.