Back to Colloquia

Physics Colloquium
Friday, September 16th, 2005, 4:00 P.M.

E300 Math/Science Center; Refreshments at 3:30 P.M. in Room E200

Alan Middleton

Syracuse University

Should physicists care if P=NP?

Determining the ground state of a classical system with many degrees of freedom can be quite a challenge. In the field of computer science, decades have been devoted to the development of algorithms for finding fast routes or scheduling events: physicists have adopted these methods to find, for example, the ground states or partition function for disordered materials. Physicists, in turn, have developed novel optimization methods. In this colloquium, I will give an introduction to how this branch of mathematics, which is less familiar to many physicists, has been used in physics and I will also discuss how the classification of the complexity of these problems developed in computer science may or may not be useful to physicists.

Emory College | Graduate School of Arts and Sciences | Emory University | Search | Index | Help