Computational Atomic Physics

  • PHYS4070/7270 (Advanced Computational Physics)

Important to note: this is not a general overview to atomic physics. There are many extremely important topics I am not discussing at all, e.g., spin-orbit effect, theory of angular momentum addition and coupling etc., which are crucial for understanding quantum mechanics of atoms. However, those are essentially regular quantum mechanics, which you have seen in other courses, and do not require a computer. Here, I focus on the aspects of many-body atomic physics for which computational calculations are essential. Some excellent sources to pursue these other topics in more detail are books by Sakurai [1], Johnson [2], Sobelman [3], and Bethe and Salpeter [4], which are available in the library.

  1. J. J. Sakurai, Modern Quantum Mechanics (2011) [in particular Chapters 3, 5, 7]
  2. W. R. Johnson, Atomic Structure Theory (2007)
  3. I. I. Sobelman, Atomic Spectra and Radiative Transitions (1992)
  4. H. A. Bethe and E. E. Salpeter, Quantum Mechanics of One-and Two-Electron Atoms (1977)

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C++ resources