High-Precision Computation and Mathematical Physics
David H. Bailey, Jonathan Michael Borwein · 2009
At the present time, IEEE 64-bit floating-point arithmetic is sufficiently accurate for most scientific applications.However, for a rapidly growing body of important scientific computing applications, a higher level of numeric precision is required.Such calculations are facilitated by high-precision software packages that include high-level language translation modules to minimize the conversion effort.This paper presents a survey of recent applications of these techniques and provides some analysis of their numerical requirements.These applications include supernova simulations, climate modeling, planetary orbit calculations, Coulomb n-body atomic systems, scattering amplitudes of quarks, gluons and bosons, nonlinear oscillator theory, Ising theory, quantum field theory and experimental mathematics.We conclude that high-precision arithmetic facilities are now an indispensable component of a modern large-scale scientific computing environment.