About GFMC40:

GFMC40 is a two-day symposium to honor Malvin H. Kalos, taking place on May 11 and 12th, 2007. The symposium is celebrating Malvin's more than 40 years of contributions to condensed matter physics, Monte Carlo methodology and computational science. The event will be held at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, where much of the development and application of Green's function Monte Carlo took place.

Green's function Monte Carlo is a simulation technique that is used to solve integral equations. In the mid-1960's, Malvin Kalos, when he was working at the United Nuclear Corporation on modeling neutron transport and nuclear fission, recognized that Monte Carlo methods could be applied to the solution of the Schroedinger and Bloch equations. These differential equations can be transformed into integral equations. A random walk can be devised which generates the needed Green's function and the solution to the integral equation can be estimated. Kalos further showed that importance sampling could dramatically lower the variance of the statistical error associated with the Monte Carlo solution. This method has led to a variety of quantum Monte Carlo techniques.

In another seminal work, Bortz, Kalos, and Lebowitz invented the widely used N-fold way to follow the time-evolution for models of atoms diffusing on a lattice, also known as kinetic Monte Carlo.

Members of the Organizing Committee:

Joseph Carlson
David Ceperley
Michael Lee
Robert Panoff
Kevin Schmidt
Paula Whitlock

Tentative Schedule

Friday, May 11

9-9:30	Registration
9:30-10:00	Leslie Greengard: Introduction
10:00-12:00	Contributed Talks
12:00-1:30	Lunch at the Courant Institute
1:30-5:00	Contributed Talks
6:00	Dinner at Grotta Azzurra Restaurant

Saturday, May 12

9:00-12:00	Contributed Talks
12:00	Farewell