Researchers publish a review article on the physics of interacting particles

Detective work in theoretical physics

Tydas indicating the number of publications related to dynamic density functional theory. Credit: M. te Vrugt et al.

Scientific articles in the field of physics are usually very short and deal with a very limited topic. A remarkable exception to this is an article recently published by physicists from the universities of Münster and Düsseldorf. The article is 127 pages long, contains a total of 1075 sources and deals with a wide range of branches of physics – from biophysics to quantum mechanics.

The article is a so-called review article and was written by physicists Michael te Vrugt and prof. Raphael Wittkowski from the Institute of Theoretical Physics and the Center for Soft Nanoscience at the University of Münster, together with prof. Hartmut Löwen of the Institute for Theoretical Physics II at the University of Düsseldorf. The purpose of such review articles is to provide an introduction to a specific subject area and to summarize and evaluate the current state of research in this area for the benefit of other researchers. “In our case, we are talking about a theory that is used in many areas – the so-called dynamic density functional theory (DDFT)”, explains last author Raphael Wittkowski. “Since we cover all aspects of the topic, the article seems to be very long and wide.”

DDFT is a method of describing systems that consist of a large number of interacting particles, such as in liquids. Understanding these systems is important in numerous research fields, such as chemistry, solid state physics or biophysics. This in turn leads to a wide range of applications for DDFT, for example in materials science and biology. “DDFT and related methods have been developed and applied by a number of researchers in a variety of contexts,” says lead author Michael te Vrugt. “We investigated what approaches there are and how they are connected to each other – and for this purpose we had to do a lot of work as historians and detectives,” he adds.

The article was published in the magazine Advances in physics, which has an impact factor of 30.91, making it the most important journal in the field of condica matter physics. It publishes only four to six articles a year. The first article on DDFT, written by Robert Evans, is also in Advances in physics, in 1979. “It is especially gratifying that our review has also been published in this magazine,” says secondary author Hartmut Löwen. “It deals with all the important theoretical aspects and fields of application of DDFT and is likely to become a standard work in our field of research.”


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More information:
Michael te Vrugt et al, Classical dynamic density functional theory: from fundamental to applications, Advances in physics (2020). DOI: 10.1080 / 00018732.2020.1854965

Provided by the University of Münster

Quotation: Researchers publish review article on the physics of interacting particles (2020, December 29) detected on December 30, 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-12-publish-article-physics-interacting-particles.html

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