Quantum Mechanics Simulation
Author
Hey you guys. I work at LIGO and I''ve been really into this quantum mechanical stuff. I was thinking about writing a COMPUTER PROGRAM that could perform some sort of approximate simulation of quantum mechanics.
So this is my PROBLEM!!! LISTEN CAREFULLY!!!! I want to be able to simulate 100 atoms (all IDENTICAL) in a finite quantum well in a 3-DIMENSIONAL BOX (cube actually, come to think about it). I have all the funky EQUATIONS lined up, but whenever I try and
run the THING, I get a SEGMENTATION FAULT. I think it is because I am RUNNING OUT OF MEMORY.
Does ANYONE know a way to simulate QUANTUM MECHANICAL effects space-wise efficiently?
THANK YOU!!!
What are you actually trying to simulate? Also, stop with the capitalization, it''s annoying.
Death of one is a tragedy, death of a million is just a statistic.
Death of one is a tragedy, death of a million is just a statistic.
Usually a segmentation fault means you''re trying to access memory you haven''t allocated. Maybe you''re trying to access an out of bounds array value, or dereferencing a pointer that points to some random value. I don''t think it means you''re running out of memory, but I could be wrong.
Did you check your memory allocation for NULL pointers ?
Documents [ GDNet | MSDN | STL | OpenGL | Formats | RTFM | Asking Smart Questions ]
C++ Stuff [ MinGW | Loki | SDL | Boost. | STLport | FLTK | ACCU Recommended Books ]
Documents [ GDNet | MSDN | STL | OpenGL | Formats | RTFM | Asking Smart Questions ]
C++ Stuff [ MinGW | Loki | SDL | Boost. | STLport | FLTK | ACCU Recommended Books ]
quote:Original post by bobman312
So this is my PROBLEM!!! LISTEN CAREFULLY!!!! I want to be able to simulate 100 atoms (all IDENTICAL) in a finite quantum well in a 3-DIMENSIONAL BOX (cube actually, come to think about it).
The 3-D box is irrelevant to the problem once you''ve defined your potential function.
quote:Original post by bobman312
Does ANYONE know a way to simulate QUANTUM MECHANICAL effects space-wise efficiently?
Yes.
Timkin
quote:
Original post by Timkin
Original post by bobman312
Does ANYONE know a way to simulate QUANTUM MECHANICAL effects space-wise efficiently?
Yes.
Timkin
Our ever mysterious and elusive moderator, folks! Let's all give him a big hand for showing us how to deal with annoying posts with some style .
EDIT: apparently you can't nest quotes
------------------------------------------------
The wind shear alone from a pink golfball can take the head off a 90-pound midget from 300 yards.
-Six String Samurai
[edited by - Mordoch Bob on June 11, 2002 3:14:14 AM]
I agree with AP. Regardless of the request for idea on simulating quantum mechanics efficiently, the original post suggests a programming and debugging problem rather than a math/physics problem.
Have you made progress with tracking down the cause of the segmentation fault?
As for quantum mechanics, I''ll leave it to folks who know about that sort of thing to decide whether or not to reply to the efficiency question.
Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.
Have you made progress with tracking down the cause of the segmentation fault?
As for quantum mechanics, I''ll leave it to folks who know about that sort of thing to decide whether or not to reply to the efficiency question.
Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.
Author
THANK YOU GUYS!!! It turns out it wasn''t the SIMULATION, but the SEGMENTATION FAULT. I was going out of bounds of my assigned memory.
I''ll try and keep the CAPS off (sorry, it''s just a HABIT).
Next time, I''ll use the debugging forum.
As a side note to Tinkin: I''m pretty sure you need the shape in the first place to define the potential. Sure, after you have the potential, the shape is irrelevant, but only because the potential is then specific to the shape.
As a second side note to Tinkin: I was informed by an advisor on Nuclear Physics that to simulate such stuff is inherently exponential, so it would take 2^100 ''size'' locations to simulate all possible reactions. Even if it is possible to completely encode a single interaction by a single bit (that''s a pretty impressive feat!), it would still take 10^20 gigabytes of hard drive space. I''m going to cut it down to 30 atoms instead and see what happens.
P.P.S. Sorry if I sounded pretentious, but I don''t normally interact with people on forums.
I''ll try and keep the CAPS off (sorry, it''s just a HABIT).
Next time, I''ll use the debugging forum.
As a side note to Tinkin: I''m pretty sure you need the shape in the first place to define the potential. Sure, after you have the potential, the shape is irrelevant, but only because the potential is then specific to the shape.
As a second side note to Tinkin: I was informed by an advisor on Nuclear Physics that to simulate such stuff is inherently exponential, so it would take 2^100 ''size'' locations to simulate all possible reactions. Even if it is possible to completely encode a single interaction by a single bit (that''s a pretty impressive feat!), it would still take 10^20 gigabytes of hard drive space. I''m going to cut it down to 30 atoms instead and see what happens.
P.P.S. Sorry if I sounded pretentious, but I don''t normally interact with people on forums.
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement
