Computational quantum mechanics (Q1991543)

The book is organized into three parts with in total 13 chapters and provides an extensive 8 page index. It comes with well formatted examples of elegant Fortran and Python code, hints, further reading references, and problems at the end of each chapter, which overall leads to a high-quality impression. The first part of the book provides an introduction to scientific programming for both Fortran and Python. Here, one language of choice suffices for the reader, but this language should then be worked through in detail, as the later chapters will require some knowledge of either language. The second part introduces some basic standard algorithms of scientific programming such as root finding, solutions of ordinary differential equations, numerical integration, eigenvalue problems with the Fortran LAPACK and Python SciPy libraries, and Fourier transforms. The third part then turns towards selected quantum mechanical problems such as solutions of stationary and time-dependent Schrödinger problems, central potentials and multi-electron systems. The book is suitable for undergraduate students with some basic knowledge in quantum mechanics. This knowledge can also be obtained in parallel, as the first parts of the book are concerned with rather general scientific programming problems. Being designed for a single course, it covers a small selection of quantum-mechanical problems only, and experts would probably profit more from the Numerical Recipes which covers way more material. However, the chosen selection of algorithms and programs is well adapted and will provide students with a useful first step into scientific programming. In particular, I think that no previous programming experience is necessary. The examples are presented in a clear style, easy to follow, and the code examples did work out of the box. Students are also given background information on how to compile and use their code. Many links to further readings and hints on potential pitfalls show that the content of the book has already been tested in several lectures. Students should however be able to visualize their data independently, as this is not explicitly covered. The major part of the book actually covers scientific programming, in the quantum-mechanical part one might have hoped for some advanced problems that ambitious students could follow after the course.