SUMMER SCHOOL ANNOUNCEMENT

         "Quantum Monte Carlo and the CASINO program VII"
         ===============================================

               Sun 5th - Sun 12th August 2012
            Apuan Alps Centre for Physics at TTI 
               Vallico Sotto, Tuscany, Italy

             http://www.vallico.net/tti/tti.html

           A4 POSTER FOR THE SCHOOL AVAILABLE HERE :
        http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/poster.png  

The seventh international summer school in the series "Quantum Monte Carlo
and the CASINO program" will take place during August 2012 at the TTI
monastery in the Tuscan Apuan Alps in Italy, organized and hosted by
members (and ex-members) of Cambridge University physics department's
Theory of Condensed Matter Group. The aim of the school is to give
students a thorough introduction to quantum Monte Carlo as a method for
performing high-quality calculations of the electronic structure of atoms,
molecules, and materials. The course is designed for young quantum
chemists or theoretical physicists who have no previous experience with
this technique, though people at any stage of their career who are
interested are welcome to take part.

The monastery is a unique venue where the community spirit and magnificent
location have inspired memorable workshops in the past. It is a delightful
15th century building incorporating an ancient church, and is situated in
the isolated but spectacular setting of the Tuscan mountain village of
Vallico Sotto. The church is fully equipped with relevant presentation and
computer technology, and all accommodation is on-site.  As with all events
at the Institute, formal lectures are restricted to the mornings, and
participants are given the freedom and space to think and to contemplate
and discuss the issues at hand. In addition to hands-on exercises, a
programme of healthy recreational activities such as mountain walks will
be organized in the afternoons, and it is hoped that by following this
strict regime, together with breathing the clean air of the Apuan Alps and
by preparing and sampling fine Tuscan cuisine, the participant will be
able to return home mentally and physically refreshed as well as better
informed.

Describing the complex behaviour of materials at the atomic level requires
a sophisticated description of the correlated motion of the electrons.  
Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) is an increasingly popular and explicitly
many-body method with the unusual capability of yielding highly accurate
results whilst also exhibiting a very favourable scaling of computational
cost with system size, and perfect parallel scaling up to (at least)
hundreds of thousands of computer cores. Over the last twenty years, the
Cambridge group have been researching QMC methods and we have created a
powerful, general computer program - CASINO - to carry out the
calculations. The school will focus both on the basic theory of QMC and on
more advanced practical techniques, and will include a thorough
introduction to the CASINO program. A background in density functional
theory or similar - though not essential - is normally thought to be
useful.

Quantum Monte Carlo and the scaling behaviour of CASINO on the fastest
computers in the world were the subject of one of last year's Psi-k
"Scientific Highlight of the Month" review articles. See "Petascale
computing opens new vistas for quantum Monte Carlo" by M.J.Gillan, M.D.
Towler and D.Alfe, available for download here:

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/papers/petascale_psik.pdf

Instructors at the school will include the main authors of the CASINO
program, Dr. Mike Towler (Cambridge/UCL), Dr. Neil Drummond (Lancaster)
and Dr. Pablo Lopez Rios (Cambridge).

Participants would normally need to book a flight to Pisa airport from
where onward transportation will be arranged (though other destinations
are possible). Details of previous schools - including photographs - are
available under the PUBLIC EVENTS link on the TTI web site.

Interested students should email Mike Towler (mdt26 at cam.ac.uk) for
registration and further details.

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