Martin Horvat – författare

This textbook provides a compendium of numerical methods to assist physics students and researchers in their daily work. It carefully considers error estimates, stability and convergence issues, the choice of optimal methods, and techniques to increase program execution speeds. The book supplies numerous examples throughout the chapters that are concluded by more comprehensive problems with a strong physics background. Instead of uncritically employing modern black-box tools, the readers are encouraged to develop a more ponderous and skeptical approach.

This revised and expanded edition now includes a new chapter on numerical integration and stable differentiation, as well as fresh material on optimal filtering, integration of gravitational many-body problems, computation of Poincaré maps, regularization of orbits, singular Sturm-Liouville problems, techniques for time evolution and spatial treatment of (semi)infinite domains in spectral methods, and phase retrieval. It also brings updated discussions of algebraic problems involving sparse matrices and of high-resolution schemes for partial differential equations.

This book is intended to help advanced undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students in their daily work by offering them a compendium of numerical methods. The choice of methods pays significant attention to error estimates, stability and convergence issues, as well as optimization of program execution speeds. Numerous examples are given throughout the chapters, followed by comprehensive end-of-chapter problems with a more pronounced physics background, while less stress is given to the explanation of individual algorithms. The readers are encouraged to develop a certain amount of skepticism and scrutiny instead of blindly following readily available commercial tools.

The second edition has been enriched by a chapter on inverse problems dealing with the solution of integral equations, inverse Sturm-Liouville problems, as well as retrospective and recovery problems for partial differential equations. The revised text now includes an introduction to sparse matrix methods, the solution of matrix equations, and pseudospectra of matrices; it discusses the sparse Fourier, non-uniform Fourier and discrete wavelet transformations, the basics of non-linear regression and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test; it demonstrates the key concepts in solving stiff differential equations and the asymptotics of Sturm-Liouville eigenvalues and eigenfunctions. Among other updates, it also presents the techniques of state-space reconstruction, methods to calculate the matrix exponential, generate random permutations and compute stable derivatives.