An Overview of Lattice-Gas Dynamics
Abstract
One can argue it is the case that the fundamental nature of the physical world is that it is quantized in such a way that phasespace is granular, and one can observe that digital computation is discrete and granular too. Given these similarities, one might try to see just how far one can go in "connecting" the two. In this regard, Richard Feynman gave a talk entitled "Simulating Physics with Computers" in 1981: "I want to talk about the possibility that there is to be an exact simulation, that the computer will do exactly the same as nature. If this is to be proved..., then it's going to be necessary that everything that happens in a finite volume of space and time would have to be exactly analyzable with a finite number of logical operations. The present theory of physics is not that way, apparently. It allows space to go down into infinitesimal distances, wavelengths to get infinitely great, terms to be summed to infinite order, and so forth..." In this seminal talk and in subsequent papers 27, 28, Feynman discussed an interesting possibility: the possibility of constructing a quantum computer to simulate quantum mechanics.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA434329
Entities
People
- Jeffrey Yepez
Organizations
- Phillips Laboratory