Computational Statistical Mechanics

The fundamental goal of Statistical Mechanics is to link the detailed determinism of many-body microscopic dynamics to the phenomenological averaged description of macroscopic behavior. During my own 30-year study of statistical mechanics computers have completely transformed the field, substantially widening the scope of this goal by making it possible to follow the motion of millions, soon to be billions, of particles. The corresponding coupled nonlinear differential equations of motion can be solved, numerically, for time intervals including millions of discrete time steps.