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Calculating long time quantum trajectories using arbitrary precision floating point numbers on COMET

This is a project which is currently making use of HPC facilities at Newcastle University. It is active.

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Project Description

In de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave theory, particles follow definite trajectories, and whether a single trajectory is ergodic over long times is an open question. The trajectories are chaotic, so 64-bit rounding errors compound and make long simulations meaningless.

We will simulate trajectories in arbitrary precision arithmetic over far longer timescales than previously reached, and test ergodicity with Kolmogorov-Smirnov-type statistics.


Software or Compute Methods

Julia with BigFloat arbitrary precision arithmetic and high-order ODE integration. Trajectories are independent, so the workload is embarrassingly parallel: one serial job per core, submitted as Slurm task arrays. Per-job memory is modest; core-hour estimates will come out of our first benchmarking runs.