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ACMD Seminar: 45 Years of Computational Atomic and Molecular Physics: What Have We Learned

Barry Schneider
Applied and Computational Mathematics (ACMD), ITL, NIST

Thursday, April 20, 2017, 15:30 - 16:30
Building 101, Lecture Room C
Gaithersburg

Thursday, April 20, 2017, 13:30 - 14:30
Room 1-4058
Boulder

Abstract: Atomic and molecular physics was an early beneficiary of the development of electronic computation.  Luckily, most of the interactions between electrons and nuclei are well understood and it appears that all that remains is to "turn the crank".  In retrospect, this was not that simple. These are complex many-body systems and in order to overcome the exponential scaling of these computations with the number of particles, one needs to have a reasonable understanding of pure and applied mathematics, the ability to devise clever algorithms and and a desire to develop efficient codes.  I this talk I will describe a number of the important developments that have taken place over the past four decades and how they have impacted our qualitative and quantitative understanding of scattering processes and the interaction of radiation with matter in quantum mechanics.

Speaker Bio: Barry Schneider is a staff member of the NIST Applied and Computational Mathematics Division. He is also a General Editor for the DLMF project. A graduate of the NYC Public Schools, he received his B.S. in chemistry from Brooklyn College, his M.S. in chemistry from Yale University and a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry from the University of Chicago. Before coming to NIST in 2014, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Southern California (1969-1970), and a staff member of the General Telephone and Electronics Laboratory (1970-1972). He joined the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory (1972-1991) and then the National Science Foundation (1991-2013 ). In early 2014, he came to NIST as General Editor of the DLMF project. Schneider's current research interests span a broad number of areas of theoretical chemistry, atomic and molecular physics, numerical methods and high performance computing. His current principal focus is developing novel methods for the solution of the time dependent Schroedinger equation in ultra-short, and intense laser fields. He has authored or co-authored 130 refereed papers and books and has given numerous invited talks in the US and abroad. Schneider was awarded a Poste Rouge by the CNRS in 1980, was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 1983 and received the prestigious Humboldt prize from the German government in 1987. He was a visiting scientist at NIST from 1995 to 2013 and spent a sabbatical year at NIST in 2000-2001. Schneider has served as Chair and Co-Chair of the APS Division of Computational Physics and Few Body Topical group and has been the organizer of a number of conferences and invited sessions here and abroad. He also serves as a reviewer for a variety of journals inside and outside the US.

Note: Visitors from outside NIST must contact Cathy Graham; (301) 975-3800; at least 24 hours in advance.

Part of the ACMD Seminar Series.

Contacts

Created January 13, 2017, Updated June 2, 2021