New Center of computational Science at the Science Institute
A Center of Excellence grant from the Icelandic Research fund administered by RANNÍS amounting to 25 mkr. a year for 3 years will lay the foundation for a new Center of Computational Science at the Science Institute of the University of Iceland. The Center will establish a stimulating environment for graduate student research and teaching in computational science and will operate a 800 compute unit computer cluster. Initially, a total of 15 graduate students and post-docs will be working at the Center, in addition to the four principal investigators: Hannes Jónsson and Vidar Gudmundsson professors in the Science Department of the University of Iceland and Andrei Manolescu and Sigurdur I. Erlingsson professors at the Reykjavík University.
Various research projects in chemistry, solid state physics and materials science will be conducted in the Center. This includes development of new materials for sustainable use of energy, such as renewable energy carriers, catalysts for energy production and materials for solar cells. Also, projects involving research on materials for nano-electronics circuits with special conduction and magnetic properties as well as spintronics will be pursued.
The computer simulations are based on basic laws of physics - quantum
mechanics - which describe the properties of atoms and electrons in
materials and special properties of nanoscale systems will be exploited to
obtain the desired functionality in micro- and macroscopic material
systems.
Figure:
An electron wave in a magnetic field entering a quantum wire
from the left is scattered from an imperfection in the wire.
A small portion of the wave is transmitted, but a larger part is reflected
and interferes with the incoming wave.