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Cornell University
Department of Physics
Phys 480/680, Astro 690 February 11, 2001
Computational Physics, Spring 2001
Homework Assignment # 3
(Due Friday, February 23 at 8:00 am in computer lab.)
Agenda and readings for the week of February 12:
Announcements:
- There will lecture this week (Mon and Wed, 02/12 and 02/14)
- There will no lab this week (Fri, 02/16)
- There will no lectures next week (Mon and Wed, 02/19 and 02/21)
- There will be lab next week (Fri, 02/23)
Goal: This problem set develops a fully automated solver which finds
all of the energy states for any specified external potential ``V[]''
to high precision.
Readings marked NR are from Numerical Recipes: The Art of
Scientific Computing, 2 
edition (in C). Readings
marked LN are from the course lecture notes to be found at
http://www.muchomas.lassp.cornell.edu/P480.
Recap of last week:
- Lec6: 02/05 [1 hr]: Change of variables for infinite domains;
Poisson's Eq. for atoms; Reduction of ODEs to standard form; Change
of variables for ODEs; Numerical Recipes derivs()
specification.
Reading: NR 4.4, 16.0. - Lec7: 02/07 [1 hr]: Theory of solution of ODEs; Simplest general
form; first and second order algorithms.
Reading: NR 16.1. - Lab2, 02/09 [1 hr]: Fourth order Runge-Kutta algorithm;
equivalence to Simpson's rule for integration; solution for entire
functions; performance of first order algorithm; numerical solution
for eigenvalues of Schrödinger's equation.
Preview of coming week:
- Lecs8-9: 02/12, 02/14 [1 hr @]: Schrödinger's equation for
atoms; Matching method for eigenvalue problems; root finding;
bracketing of roots for Schrödinger's equation.
Reading:
NR 17.0-17.2, 9.0-9.2 - Lab3, 02/23: Spectrum of hydrogen, convergence, stability of solutions,
effectiveness of root finders
Tomas Arias
Sun Feb 11 18:46:55 EST 2001