It is an indisputable fact that computational physics form part of the
essential landscape of physical science and physical education. When
writing such a book, one is faced with numerous decisions, e. g.: Which
topics should be included? What should be assumed about the readers'
prior knowledge? How should balance be achieved between numerical theory
and physical application? This book is not elementary. The reader should
have a background in qu- tum physics and computing. On the other way the
topics discussed are not addressed to the specialist. This work bridges
hopefully the gap between - vanced students, graduates and researchers
looking for computational ideas beyond their fence and the specialist
working on a special topic. Many imp- tant topics and applications are
not considered in this book. The selection is of course a personal one
and by no way exhaustive and the material presented obviously reflects
my own interest. What is Computational Physics? During the past two
decades computational physics became the third fun- mental physical
discipline. Like the 'traditional partners' experimental physics and
theoretical physics, computational physics is not restricted to a
special area, e. g., atomic physics or solid state physics.
Computational physics is a meth- ical ansatz useful in all subareas and
not necessarily restricted to physics. Of course this methods are
related to computational aspects, which means nume- cal and algebraic
methods, but also the interpretation and visualization of huge amounts
of data.
