Brief Summary of Each Supplement
Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement No. 178
The 50th Anniversary of the Alder Transition
— Recent Progress on Computational Statistical Physics —
Proceedings of the Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Alder Transition
Edited by Y. Hiwatari and M. Isobe
This volume of the Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement involves
the proceedings of papers presented at the two successive conferences
held in Kanazawa, Japan. One was the special session entitled ``The 50th
anniversary of the Alder transition —Dawn and Historical Review of the
Molecular Simulation—'' as a part of the 21st annual meeting of the
Molecular Simulation Society of Japan (MSSJ), November 28, 2007.
The other was the ``Symposium on The 50th Anniversary of the Alder
Transition —Recent Progress on Computational Statistical Physics—'',
November 29-30, 2007. About 70 researchers participated in the symposium,
gaving 18 oral and 16 poster presentations. These presentations included
two invited talks by Professors Berni J. Alder and Kyozi Kawasaki. This
volume includes not only these papers but also several invited papers
to celebrate the special issue.
In 1957, the first paper was published in the November Issue of
J. Chem. Phys. on the solid/fluid transition in a hard-sphere system via novel
methodology ``Molecular Dynamics'' developed by Alder and Wainwright.
This paper indicated clear evidence of the existence of the solid/liquid
phase transition in a hard-sphere system. This is called the Alder
transition. This paper and their following work created a new paradigm
of research on many-body problems, with the development of new
technology, that is, ``the electronic computer''. Up to now these papers
have inspired us and have provided a new perspective on the study of
condensed matter physics, fundamental non-equilibrium statistical
mechanics, and especially liquid theory. As the year 2007 was the 50th
year celebration for publishing this ground breaking paper, we organized
several events of ``The 50th Anniversary for the Alder transition'' in
Japan.
In the symposium, the following four topics of the session were discussed.
(1) Computational Statistical Physics and the Alder Transition
(2) Long-Time Tail and Transport Phenomena
(3) Glass Transition and Mode-Coupling Theory
(4) Multi-Scale Multi-Physics
Almost all the interesting work was related to the famous works by
Professor Alder in non-equilibrium statistical physics. In particular,
the second topic has been so actively discussed in Japan that no less
than ten papers were contributed to this issue. The authors of these
ten papers have a high motivation to research their topics with much
faster and more advanced computers.
This volume provides as a survey on the historical review of the
molecular simulation and the recent progress of the computational
statistical physics, and will be a monumental literature to all
researchers related to the computer simulation, as well as to
young scientists interested in this subject.
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