Introduction to the School

Roadmap to QMC

• Why QMC--the curse of dimensionality: random walks can solve this problem

• Variational Monte Carlo
• Diffusion Monte Carlo: difficulty is the sign problem
• Path Integral Monte Carlo can treat systems for finite temperature
• Other methods: dynamics, reptation, auxilliary field

• Why are we starting with DFT? We need trial functions.

• Why applications: geophysics,...