Computational Physics: An Introduction (Second Edition)
P H Borcherds · European Journal of Physics · 2001
This book has much in common with many other books on Computational Physics texts, some of which are helpfully listed by the author as `A subjective review on related texts'. The first five chapters are introductory, covering finite differences, linear algebra, stochastics and ordinary and partial differential equations. The final section of chapter 3 is entitled `Stochastic Optimisation', and covers Simulated Annealing and Genetic Algorithms. Neither topic is adequately covered; an explicit example, with algorithms, in each case would have been helpful. However few other computational physics texts mention these topics at all. The chapters in the final part of the book are more advanced, and cover comprehensively Simulation and Statistical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanical Simulation and Hydrodynamics. These chapters include specialist material not in other texts, e.g. Alder vortices and the Nosé--Hoover method. There is an extensive coverage of Ewald summation. The author is in the course of augmenting his book by web-resident sample programs, which should enhance the value of the book. This book should appeal to anyone working in the fields covered in the final section. It ought also to be in any physics library.