Complex diffusion and complex geometries: from superfluids and fractal nanowires to demographics and human mobility networks

  • IFISC Seminar

  • Alberto Hernando de Castro
  • SThAR and EPFL, Switzerland
  • Oct. 11, 2017, 2:30 p.m.
  • IFISC Seminar Room
  • Announcement file

It is easy to find many examples in the fields of social physics and econophysics of how physical models inspired us to mathematically describe socioeconomic systems. However, what it is no so common is to find that a research on collective human behavior inspires new numerical methods for quantum physics. In this seminar, I would like to show how we found a novel computational method for diagonalizing the multidimensional Schrodinger equation [1] while working with Spanish city-population data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) [2]. In a more general overview, I will show our computational developments in describing complex diffusion in physics as our algorithms for time-dependent density functional theory for superfluid Helium-4 ---bosonic--- and Helium-3 ---fermionic--- (TDDFT-He) [3], or our algorithms for imaginary-time non-uniform mesh method (ITNUMM) [1] for dynamics of electrons in fractal nanowires and condensates in nanoporous media. I will also show how many concepts and computational tools used in physics can be also applied to understand human mobility, economic systems and demographics [4,5]. These physics-inspired models have been successfully applied in the Big Data industry for designing electoral campaigns ---as in the last Spanish presidential elections in 2016--- viral marketing campaigns ---as used by United Nations in 2017--- or transportation networks [6,7].


Contact details:

Llorenç Serra

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