Algorithms and computer code for ab initio path integral molecular dynamics simulations

This thesis presents i-PI, a new path integral molecular dynamics code designed to capture nuclear quantum effects in ab initio electronic structure calculations of condensed phase systems. This software has an implementation of estimators used to calculate a wide range of static and dynamical properties and of state-of-the-art techniques used to increase the computational efficiency of path integral simulations. i-PI has been designed in a highly modular fashion, to ensure that it is as simple as possible to develop and implement new algorithms to keep up with the research frontier, and so that users can take maximum advantage of the numerous electronic structure programs which are freely available without needing to rewrite large amounts of code. Among the functionality of the i-PI code is a novel integrator for constant pressure dynamics, which is used to investigate the properties of liquid water at 750 K and 10 GPa, and efficient estimators for the calculation of single particle momentum distri- butions, which are used to study the properties of solid and liquid ammonia. These show respectively that i-PI can be used to make predictions about systems which are both difficult to study experimentally and highly non-classical in nature, and that it can illustrate the relative advantages and disadvantages of different theoretical methods and their ability to reproduce experimental data.