David M. Ceperley
Born (1949-01-01) January 1, 1949
NationalityAmerican
TitleProfessor of Physics
AwardsFellow of the American Physical Society
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Elected member of the National Academy of Sciences
Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal
Aneesur Rahman Prize
Academic background
EducationB.S., Physics & Mathematics (1971)
Ph.D., Theoretical Physics (1976)
Alma materUniversity of Michigan
Cornell University
Doctoral advisorGeoffrey Chester
Malvin Kalos
Other advisorsJoel Lebowitz
Berni Alder
John Bardeen
Anthony Leggett
Academic work
InstitutionsUniversity of Illinois
Main interestsQuantum Monte Carlo

David Matthew Ceperley (born 1949) is a theoretical physicist in the physics department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign or UIUC. He is a world expert in the area of Quantum Monte Carlo computations, a method of calculation that is generally recognised to provide accurate quantitative results for many-body problems described by quantum mechanics.

Life, education and career

Ceperley was born in Charleston, West Virginia USA in 1949, and attended George Washington High School there. He was a student at Atlantic College in Wales UK, received a BS degree in physics and mathematics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1971 and a PhD in theoretical physics at Cornell University in 1976. His advisors were Geoffrey Chester at Cornell University and Malvin Kalos at the Courant Institute at New York University. He had postdoctoral appointments in Orsay, France, New York University and Rutgers University, where he worked with Joel Lebowitz on the simulation of polymers. He was a staff scientist at the National Resource for Computational Chemistry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1978 to 1987. Since 1987, he has been a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a staff member at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications from 1987 to 2012. In his development as a leading mathematical and computational physicist Ceperley had a number of acknowledged mentors, many of whom happen to be his former supervisors such as Geoffrey Chester, Malvin Kalos, Joel Lebowitz and Berni Alder. At UIUC he has been influenced by the physics Nobel Laureates Anthony Leggett and John Bardeen.

Ceperley was married to Perine Davis (1950–2015); they have three children.

Major professional contributions

Ceperley's methods have turned the path-integral formulation of the quantum mechanics of strongly interacting many-particle systems into a precise tool to elucidate quantitatively the properties of electrons in solids, superfluids, and other complex quantum systems. His calculation, with Berni Alder, of the equation of state of the 3 dimensional electron gas using a stochastic method[1][2] has provided basic and definitive input data for numerical applications of density functional theory to electron systems. Their joint publication is one of the most cited articles in Physical Review Letters. The Tanatar-Ceperley exchange-correlation functional[3] is used for the 2 dimensional electron gas.

Ceperley not only applied Feynman's exact mapping of superfluid 4He onto classical ring polymers but also created the algorithms to make path integration a precise calculational tool to compare theory with experiment. This method has enabled the elucidation of superfluid in terms of winding numbers and to reveal the deep relation between superfluidity and Bose-Einstein condensation.[4] He derived the exact expression for tunnelling splittings in complex systems and, by computing the exchange in quantum crystals, resolved the origin of magnetism in solid 3He.[5] He introduced the restricted path integral method to treat Fermi statistics in finite-temperature many-body quantum systems[6] and applied this method to the normal 3He liquid and to hydrogen under extreme conditions thus predicting the principal Hugoniot of compressed deuterium[7] in agreement with shock wave experiments.

Ceperley has pioneered novel methods for stochastic computation of quantum systems: variational Monte Carlo techniques for fermions,[8] the fixed-node approximation and nodal release methods, the use of Metropolis steps to enforce reversibility in approximate Green's functions,[9] the development of importance-sampled Diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) method that has largely superseded other methods, the use of twist-averaged boundary conditions to reduce systematic size errors,[10] the extension of DMC to systems having broken time-reversal symmetry, the fixed phase method.[11] These are essential ingredients to make the methods quantitative and accurate. Ceperley has also introduced and developed the Coupled Electron-Ion Monte Carlo, a first- principles simulation method to perform statistical calculations of finite temperature quantum nuclei using electronic energies[12] and has established a first-order phase transition in the metal-insulator transition of liquid hydrogen.[13]

Richard Martin and Ceperley started the annual workshop series, Recent Developments in Electronic Structure Methods[14] in 1989. Ceperley has also been an organiser of Summer Schools in Computational Materials Science. Videos of Ceperley's lectures[15] on Quantum Monte Carlo methods can be found on YouTube.

Selected honours and awards

Ceperley's pioneering work on the development and application of the path integral Monte Carlo method for quantum many-body systems, such as superfluid helium and hydrogen under extreme conditions has been recognised by several organisations including Fellow of the American Physical Society (1992), the Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal[16] for many-body physics (1994), the Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics of the American Physical Society (1998), a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1999) and elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences (2005). He became the Founder Professor of Engineering (2006), a Center for Advanced Studies Professor (2009) and a Blue Waters Professor (2014) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He was awarded the Berni Alder prize by CECAM (Lausanne, Switzerland) in 2016.

References

  1. ↑ Ceperley, D. (1 September 1978). "Ground state of the fermion one-component plasma: A Monte Carlo study in two and three dimensions". Physical Review B. American Physical Society (APS). 18 (7): 3126–3138. Bibcode:1978PhRvB..18.3126C. doi:10.1103/physrevb.18.3126. ISSN 0163-1829.
  2. ↑ Ceperley, D. M.; Alder, B. J. (18 August 1980). "Ground State of the Electron Gas by a Stochastic Method". Physical Review Letters. American Physical Society (APS). 45 (7): 566–569. Bibcode:1980PhRvL..45..566C. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.45.566. ISSN 0031-9007. S2CID 55620379.
  3. ↑ Tanatar, B.; Ceperley, D. M. (15 March 1989). "Ground state of the two-dimensional electron gas". Physical Review B. American Physical Society (APS). 39 (8): 5005–5016. Bibcode:1989PhRvB..39.5005T. doi:10.1103/physrevb.39.5005. ISSN 0163-1829. PMID 9948889.
  4. ↑ Ceperley, D. M. (1 March 1995). "Path integrals in the theory of condensed helium". Reviews of Modern Physics. American Physical Society (APS). 67 (2): 279–355. Bibcode:1995RvMP...67..279C. doi:10.1103/revmodphys.67.279. ISSN 0034-6861.
  5. ↑ Ceperley, D. M.; Jacucci, G. (20 April 1987). "Calculation of exchange frequencies in bcc 3He with the path-integral Monte Carlo method". Physical Review Letters. American Physical Society (APS). 58 (16): 1648–1651. Bibcode:1987PhRvL..58.1648C. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.58.1648. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 10034498.
  6. ↑ Ceperley, D. M. (13 July 1992). "Path-integral calculations of normal liquid 3He". Physical Review Letters. American Physical Society (APS). 69 (2): 331–334. Bibcode:1992PhRvL..69..331C. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.69.331. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 10046646.
  7. ↑ Militzer, B.; Ceperley, D. M. (28 August 2000). "Path Integral Monte Carlo Calculation of the Deuterium Hugoniot". Physical Review Letters. American Physical Society (APS). 85 (9): 1890–1893. arXiv:physics/0001047. Bibcode:2000PhRvL..85.1890M. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.85.1890. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 10970640. S2CID 16423777.
  8. ↑ Ceperley, D.; Chester, G. V.; Kalos, M. H. (1 September 1977). "Monte Carlo simulation of a many-fermion study". Physical Review B. American Physical Society (APS). 16 (7): 3081–3099. Bibcode:1977PhRvB..16.3081C. doi:10.1103/physrevb.16.3081. ISSN 0556-2805.
  9. ↑ Reynolds, Peter J.; Ceperley, David M.; Alder, Berni J.; Lester, William A. (1982). "Fixed-node quantum Monte Carlo for molecules". The Journal of Chemical Physics. AIP Publishing. 77 (11): 5593–5603. doi:10.1063/1.443766. ISSN 0021-9606.
  10. ↑ Lin, C.; Zong, F. H.; Ceperley, D. M. (18 June 2001). "Twist-averaged boundary conditions in continuum quantum Monte Carlo algorithms". Physical Review E. 64 (1): 016702. arXiv:cond-mat/0101339. Bibcode:2001PhRvE..64a6702L. doi:10.1103/physreve.64.016702. ISSN 1063-651X. PMID 11461437. S2CID 8494735.
  11. ↑ Ortiz, G.; Ceperley, D. M.; Martin, R. M. (25 October 1993). "New stochastic method for systems with broken time-reversal symmetry: 2D fermions in a magnetic field". Physical Review Letters. American Physical Society (APS). 71 (17): 2777–2780. Bibcode:1993PhRvL..71.2777O. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.71.2777. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 10054773.
  12. ↑ Ceperley, D. M.; Dewing, M. (22 May 1999). "The penalty method for random walks with uncertain energies". The Journal of Chemical Physics. 110 (20): 9812–9820. arXiv:physics/9812035. Bibcode:1999JChPh.110.9812C. doi:10.1063/1.478034. ISSN 0021-9606. S2CID 8091933.
  13. ↑ Morales, M. A.; Pierleoni, C.; Schwegler, E.; Ceperley, D. M. (21 June 2010). "Evidence for a first-order liquid-liquid transition in high-pressure hydrogen from ab initio simulations". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (29): 12799–12803. doi:10.1073/pnas.1007309107. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2919906. PMID 20566888.
  14. ↑ "Recent Developments in Electronic Structure | Materials Computation Center". Mcc.uiuc.edu. 3 April 2014. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  15. ↑ "MCC Workshops". Retrieved 20 May 2014 – via YouTube.
  16. ↑ "Recent Progress in Many Body Theories". Indiana.edu. Archived from the original on 13 September 2016. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  • Recent Development of Electronic Structure Workshop
  • Ceperley lectures on YouTube
  • Archived 13 September 2016 at the Wayback Machine Feenberg Memorial Medal
  • Berni J. Alder CECAM prize
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