Two-Dimensional Melting Transition: New Algorithms, New Insights - a podcast by Michael Haack

The hard-disk model has exerted outstanding influence on computational
physics and statistical mechanics. Decades ago, hard diskswere the first system to be studied by Markov-chain Monte Carlo
methods and by molecular dynamics. It was in hard disks, throughnumerical simulations, that a two-dimensional melting transition was
first seen to occur even though such systems cannot develop long-rangecrystalline order. Analysis of the system was made difficult
by the absence of powerful simulation methods. In recent years, wehave developed powerful Monte Carlo algorithms for hard disks and
related systems. I will in particular show how the event-chain MonteCarlo algorithm has allowed us to prove that hard disks melt with a
first-order transition from the liquid to the hexatic and a continuoustransition from the hexatic to the solid. I will finally describe how a
new factorized Metropolis filter transforms the event-chain algorithminto a paradigm for general Monte Carlo calculations. First results
with the generalized algorithm have allowed us to establish the phasediagram for two-dimensional soft disks and Yukawa particles.

Further episodes of Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC)

Further podcasts by Michael Haack

Website of Michael Haack