Department of Physics Monte Carlo simulations of Critical Phenomena in Physics

General information

• The course begins 2026-03-24, 13:15 in NAT.D.380.
  
• Course information (in swedish).
• Schedule for 2026.
• Information about computer labs and grades.
• C tutorial (external link).
• Short introduction to the g2 library.
• Jamming as a critical phenomenon

The course consists of five parts. The lecture notes also include the instructions to the computer labs.

1. Introduction, statistical background, the Lennard-Jones gas (chapters 1-3).
   Random number generator: source file, header file, and documentation.
   


2. Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation of the 2D Ising model (chapter 4.1--4.8).
   Computer lab I: Two Monte Carlo methods for the Ising model.
   Note related to lab I.
   Some source files for Lab I.
   


3. Scaling analyses in critical phenomena (chapter 4.10--4.11).
   Computer lab II: Scaling analyses in critical phenomena.
   Source file for Lab II.
   


4. Some simple stochastic models.
   Computer Lab 3: Some simple stochastic models.
   For this lab you will be assigned one task to complete:

   Tor Djupman,	1 Percolation
   John Fredriksson,	2 Cluster sizes in percolation
   Alba Rebeca Gutierrez Melendez,	3 Self-avoiding random walk
   Herman Näslund,	4 Complex networks
   Felix Svedberg,	5 Self-organized criticality: The sand pile model in two dimensions

To pass the course you need to complete the three labs and pass the exam. If you pass the exam, bonus points from the labs are used to determine the grade.
For an example exam (2010-06-01) look here, but skip problems 7 and 8. Solutions to question 4 and 7 and 8.

Department of Physics Umeå University Last changed: 2026-05-19 Responsible for this page: Peter Olsson