International summer School in electronic structure Theory: electron correlation in Physics and Chemistry (ISTPC)
Location: CNRS Center Paul Langevin, Aussois, Savoie, France
Organisers
ISTPC is an international two-week summer school in electronic structure theory. The two first editions were organized in 2015 and 2017 in Aussois, France. The main topic of the school is electron correlation in physics and chemistry, with a particular focus on the formal aspects of electronic-structure theory. The so-called many-body problem is the common denominator to all lectures. It will be tackled at several levels (model systems, ab initio approaches and their approximations, in-principle-exact approaches), with a multiple set of tools that come from both the quantum chemistry and the solid-state physics communities. While part of the school is dedicated to standard quantum chemical and condensed-matter physics methods, promising and emerging approaches for strongly correlated systems (such as the quantum-chemistry density-matrix renormalization group method, quantum Monte Carlo, density-matrix functional theory and combined wave-function/density-functional approaches) as well as some mathematical aspects of electronic-structure theory will also be covered. The school is expected to gather chemists and physicists who use or develop theoretical and computational methods for electronic-structure calculations.
The following topics will be covered.
* Second quantization
* Density functional theory (DFT)
* Time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT)
* Hartree-Fock (HF) and post-HF methods
* Multiconfigurational and multireference quantum chemical methods
* Model Hamiltonians
* Linear-response theory
* Basics in solid-state physics
* Green functions: GW method, Bethe-Salpeter equation, Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT)
* Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC)
* Density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG)
* Random Phase Approximation (RPA)
* Mathematical aspects of electronic-structure theory
* Reduced density-matrix functional theory
One of the main motivations for teaching formal aspects of electronic-structure theory is to highlight and explain both strengths and limitations of widely used computational methods in quantum chemistry and condensed matter physics. Another important aspect is the exploration of new theories and concepts that have been developed recently or are still under development, in particular for the description of strongly correlated molecular and extended systems. For such systems, the standard paradigm of solid-state physics consisting in describing interacting electrons as a collection of weakly interacting (quasi-) particles breaks down and new methods are needed. Interestingly, these methods often mix concepts that come from either solid-state physics or chemistry. We selected the above (highly multidisciplinary) list of topics on the basis of this observation.
The timetable will essentially be the same as the one of the 2017 edition:
https://quantique.u-strasbg.fr/ISTPC/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=istpc2017:istpc2017_timetable.pdf
Three one-hour-and-half lectures are given every day followed by a two-hour-and-half tutorial session. One-hour informal discussions among the participants and the lecturers of the day are scheduled every evening after dinner.
The full daily schedule is given below.
8:30 -10:00 lecture 1
10:00 -10:30 coffee break
10:30 -12:00 lecture 2
12:15 lunch
13:45-15:15 lecture 3
15:30 -18:00 tutorials
19:00-20:00 dinner
20:00-21:00 discussion
All participants are encouraged to present a poster or to make a flash presentation about their research work during the poster session. The latter is usually scheduled during the second week of the school (in place of a tutorial session).
Some of the lecture material is already available on the website of the ISTPC (see the link below). We are willing to share the material of the 2020 edition with CECAM.
https://quantique.u-strasbg.fr/ISTPC/doku.php?id=istpc2015:lectures
References
Emmanuel Fromager (University of Strasbourg) - Organiser
Pierre-Francois LOOS (CNRS) - Organiser
Vincent Robert (Institut de Chimie de Strasbourg) - Organiser
Julien Toulouse (Sorbonne Université) - Organiser
Italy
Romaniello Pina (Universita' degli Studi di Milano) - Organiser