Quantum dynamics in Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

CCPQ is a collaborative computational project which serves the needs of the UK Atomic and Molecular physics community in respect of leading edge software development, especially in its five principal areas of interest: collision physics, antimatter physics, multiphoton physics, cold atom physics and molecular physics. Formerly known as CCP2, this collaboration has existed continuously since 1978,
but has been constantly evolving and adapting to address new problems. A spin-off company "Quantemol" was formed in 2004 to market some of its electron-collision software. The software will be applied to generate new data for applications like the simulation of industrial plasmas or to investigate electron-induced damage to biological molecules, including positron annihilation processes in PET scans. Software developments to provide molecular line data for the search for exoplanets will also be undertaken.
The proposed flagship project, "Coherent control of many body systems", represents a completely new initiative. It will combine recent cutting edge developments in the UK with a well-known and well-respected open-source international project. It will develop new software to tackle previously intractable problems, hence enabling UK researchers to investigate accurately, for the first time, the time-evolution of strongly correlated quantum systems in a range of subfields encompassing ultracold atom physics, quantum information and driven condensed matter systems.
CCPQ will run an active programme of meetings and workshops with a view to stimulating collaboration and training researchers to address new problems in computational atomic and molecular physics, as well as High Performance Computing. As well as new initiatives and flagship software development, the collaboration will maintain an ongoing programme of maintenance, curation and upgrading of its existing software suite. Its activities will also support two projects funded by previous software calls in particular the "UK R-matrix Atomic and Molecular Physics HPC Code Development Project" (UK-RAMP) as well as the "Wavepacket dynamics for the future: A general purpose HPC-compliant program" project.

The present project will support the associated spin-off company Quantemol. Conversely, its members and their students and PDRAs also benefit from Quantemol's expertise -and receive training- in the development of scientific software in a commercial environment. The applications of the electron collisional software range from industrial plasmas (specific software is marketed by Quantemol) to radiological damage (including specific studies which are leading to improvements in radiotherapy and cancer treatments).
CCPQ's work will lead to better understanding of experiments at CERN on antihydrogen formation and trapping. It will support a European project (awarded to Tennyson) to develop a molecular line list which will be used in the search for exoplanets.
The collaboration will share existing CCPQ HPC expertise with collaborators and young researchers: this expertise is evidenced by the HPC prizes awarded recently to three working group (WG) members (Taylor, Scott, Scott). Training in the latest algorithms and techniques of computational physics is also accessible to a large proportion of the Atomic and Molecular physics community via CCPQ's active programme of meetings and workshops.
The flagship project topic of coherent control of quantum many-body systems relates to the expectation that future technologies may be based to some degree on quantum-coherent dynamics, even at room temperatures. Current understanding is limited by our inability to simulate the underlying quantum processes at a microscopic level. The ability to control and modify the properties of materials in real time by means of an external drive may lead to new practical applications; accurate simulation of the underlying microscopic behavior will shed new insights and stimulate new applications. The algorithms which would be implemented and developed by the flagship project are also currently being applied to classical models such as road traffic jams, production lines in factories to even order books in the stock exchange by the Oxford group of the flagship PI (Jaksch).