Molecular Dynamics Simulations

This volume contains papers presented at the Thirteenth Taniguchi Symposium on the Theory of Condensed Matter, which was held at Kashikojima (in Ise­ Shima National Park), Japan, from 6th to 9th November, 1990. The topic of the symposium was Molecular Dynamics Simulations. The general objective of this series of the Taniguchi Symposia is to encour­ age developing fields of great promise in condensed matter physics. Our theme, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, certainly fulfills this requirement, be­ cause the field is developing at a remarkable pace and its future is considered almost boundless. It was in the 1950s that the original idea of the MD methods was first pro­ posed and applied to the study of physical systems composed of many particles. In fact, the invention of the MD techniques occurred soon after the construction of the first computers. For almost 35 years since then, MD methods, together with Monte Carlo methods, have played major parts in the drama of computer simulations. The triumph of MD simulations is not confined to numerical aspects of detailed analyses of physical systems. MD simulations have verified some un­ expected facts and introduced some new concepts, all of which had never been predicted previously from analytical theories. The occurrence of the Alder tran­ sition in a system of repulsive particles and the behavior of the long-time tails of the velocity autocorrelation function for a liquid are just two examples of the results achieved by means of MD studies.