Integrating Visualization and Computational Modeling in Condensed Matter Physics

Despite being primarily an elective course in most physics departments, Condensed Matter Physics (CMP) is a natural extension and a vivid application of Quantum Mechanics and Statistics Mechanics. Condensed states of matter (solids & liquids) make up most of the material world around us and are responsible for almost all of the technology that we depend on. Therefore, it serves as an excellent bridge between physics and the field of applied physics and engineering. However, the complexity of the matter itself often leads to using highly simplified 1D or 2D models in instruction and hypothetical textbook problems in practice. To overcome these obstacles and develop a better appreciation of the modern topics in CMP, I have integrated visualization and computational modeling in the CMP course. We have primarily used the MIT Atomic Scale Modeling Toolkit (https://nanohub.org/resources/ucb_compnano) for visualization, computational modeling and simulation to enhance our understanding of basic concepts and physical models, and to make better connections to real-world applications. For instance, we have used the modules to visualize 3D crystal structures, to understand the bonding nature, to investigate the correlation of structure and scattering signals, and to calculate the electronic band structures. These tasks are completely done on the nanoHUB webserver. The toolkit plots results alive, and also provides the option to download results for students to include in their reports.