Computers and Liquid State Statistical Mechanics

TL;DR

This paper reviews how electronic computers have transformed the study of liquid state statistical mechanics, enabling precise calculations and new physical insights into complex systems.

Contribution

It provides a selective review of recent advances in condensed matter physics made possible by computer simulations.

Findings

Calculation of water and ice phase diagrams

Insights into protein folding and liquid crystal formation

Enhanced understanding of nucleation processes

Abstract

The advent of electronic computers has revolutionised the application of statistical mechanics to the liquid state. Computers have permitted, for example, the calculation of the phase diagram of water and ice and the folding of proteins. The behaviour of alkanes adsorbed in zeolites, the formation of liquid crystal phases and the process of nucleation. Computer simulations provide, on one hand, new insights into the physical processes in action, and on the other, quantitative results of greater and greater precision. Insights into physical processes facilitate the reductionist agenda of physics, whilst large scale simulations bring out emergent features that are inherent (although far from obvious) in complex systems consisting of many bodies. It is safe to say that computer simulations are now an indispensable tool for both the theorist and the experimentalist, and in the future their usefulness will only increase. This chapter presents a selective review of some of the incredible advances in condensed matter physics that could only have been achieved with the use of computers.