(Dr. Stefan Sandfeld)
Simulations of materials and devices are strongly dependent on the solution of, in general, complex systems of (differential) equations. The number of degrees of freedom of the problems under consideration makes an analytical solution usually impossible. Alternative strategies almost always rely on numerical methods for e.g. finding energy minima or saddle points, time integrating a conserved quantity or simply solving a large system of linear equations.
This course introduces a set of numerical methods that are widely used in industry and research. Topics covered include: optimization strategies, interpolation/extrapolation of curves, iterative solution of large systems of linear equations, ordinary differential equations. Furthermore, this course also introduces some important computational tools and programs for data visualization and data processing. A brief hands-on introduction to parallel programming with openMP for speeding up existing serial code will also be given.
Prerequisite for this course is basic knowledge of a programming language (e.g. MATLAB or Python or C++) as introduced e.g. in Multiscale Simulation