Object orientation and visualization of physics in two dimensions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a C++ library for visualizing two-dimensional physical systems that abstracts complex graphics programming and models physics algebraically, aiding analysis and extension to 3D.

Contribution

It presents a novel, reusable visualization toolkit that combines graphical rendering with physical system analysis, enabling faithful and extendable representations.

Findings

Successfully visualized 2D XY model with magnetic field

Demonstrated diffusion model on triangular lattice

Toolkit is adaptable to other programming languages and 3D systems

Abstract

We present a generalized framework for cellular/lattice based visualizations in two dimensions based on state of the art computing abstractions. Our implementation takes the form of a library of reusable functions written in C++ which hides complex graphical programming issues from the user and mimics the algebraic structure of physics at the Hamiltonian level. Our toolkit is not just a graphics library but an object analysis of physical systems which disentangles separate concepts in a faithful analytical way. It could be rewritten in other languages such as Java and extended to three dimensional systems straightforwardly. We illustrate the usefulness of our analysis with implementations of spin-films (the two-dimensional XY model with and without an external magnetic field) and a model for diffusion through a triangular lattice.