Computational particle physics refers to the methods and computing tools developed in and used by particle physics research. Like computational chemistry or computational biology, it is, for particle physics both a specific branch and an interdisciplinary field relying on computer science, theoretical and experimental particle physics and mathematics. The main fields of computational particle physics are:
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Note: This contains an excerpt from Computer Algebra in Particle Physics by Stefan Weinzierl
Particle physics is an important field of application for computer algebra and exploits the capabilities of Computer Algebra Systems(CAS). This leads to valuable feed-back for the development of CAS. Looking at the history of computer algebra systems, the first programs date back to the 1960’s.[5] The first systems were almost entirely based on LISP (“LISt Programming language”). LISP is an interpreted language and, as the name already indicates, designed for the manipulation of lists. Its importance for symbolic computer programs in the early days can be compared to the importance of FORTRAN for numerical programs in the same period. Already in this first period, the program REDUCE had some special features for the application to high energy physics. An exception to the LISP-based programs was SCHOONSHIP, written in assembler language by Veltman and specially designed for applications in particle physics. The use of assembler code lead to an incredible fast program (compared to the interpreted programs at that time) and allowed the calculation of more complex scattering processes in high energy physics. The importance of this program was recognized in 1998 by awarding the Nobel prize to M. Veltman. Also the program MACSYMA [15] deserves to be mentioned explicitly, since it triggered important development with regard to algorithms. In the 1980’s new computer algebra systems started to be written in C. This allowed to exploit better the resources of the computer (compared to the interpreted language LISP) and at the same time allowed to maintain portability (which would not have been possible in assembler language). This period marked also the appearence of the first commercial computer algebra system, among which Mathematica and Maple [16] are the best known examples. In addition, also a few dedicated programs appeared, an example relevant to particle physics is the program FORM by J. Vermaseren as a (portable) successor to SCHOONSHIP. In the last few years issues of the maintainability of large projects became more and more important and the overall programming paradigma changed from procedural programming to object-oriented design. In terms of programming languages this was reflected by a move from C to C++. Following this change of paradigma, the library GiNaC was developed. The GiNac library allows symbolic calculations in C++. The early days, mainly LISP based systems 1958 FORTRAN 1960 LISP 1965 MATHLAB 1967 SCHOONSHIP 1968 REDUCE 1970 SCRATCHPAD, evolved into AXIOM 1971 MACSYMA 1979 muMATH, evolved into DERIVE Commercialization and migration to C 1972 C 1981 SMP, with successor MATHEMATICA 1988 MAPLE 1992 MuPAD Specialized systems 1975 CAYLEY (group theory), with successor MAGMA 1985 PARI (number theory calculations) 1989 FORM (particle physics) 1992 MACAULAY (algebraic geometry) A move to object-oriented design and open-source 1984 C++ 1995 Java 1999 GiNaC . Higher loop calculations in quantum field theory tend to fall into this category.