David M. Ceperley

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


Primary Section: 13, Physics
Secondary Section: 33, Applied Physical Sciences
Membership Type:
Member (elected 2006)

Biosketch

Ceperley, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is one of the original developers and users of the Quantum Monte Carlo method for many-boson and fermion systems, both the ground state variational and diffusion Monte Carlo algorithms and the finite temperature Path Integral Monte Carlo algorithm. He applied these algorithms to the electron gas, liquid and solid hydrogen and helium as well as other systems. He has been a user of high performance computing for many years.  

Research Interests

My research interests are to develop the methods to perform simulations of quantum many-body systems, and to apply these methods to current problems in physics and chemistry. I use simulation methods (quantum Monte Carlo) that are based on imaginary time path integrals to sample the phase space of the quantum particles and are able to calculate, without approximation, properties of bosonic systems in equilibrium. We are interested in liquid and solid helium including droplets, and bose condensed systems, in particular, their superfluid properties. We are also interested in electronic systems, such as electrons in a uniform background, Wigner crystals, hydrogen under pressure and so forth. Exact methods for many-body fermion systems are not yet developed; that is another aspect of my research.

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