Condensed Matter

Abstract

Condensed matter physics provides an understanding of macroscopic properties of solid or liquid matter in terms of the properties of nuclei and electrons of the constituting atoms. While in principle the problem is well understood - quantum mechanics of interacting many-body systems together with statistical mechanics provides the appropriate framework - in practice the problem is extremely complicated. Thus, a full first princi-ples approach, where one would solve the Dirac or Schr¨odinger equation for a system of N ≈ 10 22 nuclei (as contained in 1 cm 3 of condensed matter at typical conditions) plus the appropriate number of electrons, and then uses this information within the formalism of statistical thermodynamics, is by no means feasible. This will not become feasible dur-ing the next decades, even if the exponential increase of the computational power of the available hardware with time continues.