Introduction to Monte Carlo methods

Monte Carlo simulations are widely used in many areas including particle accelerators. In this lecture, after a short introduction and reviewing of some statistical backgrounds, we will discuss methods such as direct inversion, rejection method, and Markov chain Monte Carlo to sample a probability distribution function, and methods for variance reduction to evaluate numerical integrals using the Monte Carlo simulation. We will also briefly introduce the quasi-Monte Carlo samp...

In these lecture notes some applications of Monte Carlo integration methods in Quantum Field Theory - in particular in Quantum Chromodynamics - are introduced and discussed.

We present several implementations of the Metropolis method, an adaptive Monte Carlo algorithm, which allow for the calculation of multi-dimensional integrals over arbitrary on-shell four-momentum phase space. The Metropolis technique reveals itself very suitable for the treatment of high energy processes in particle physics, particularly when the number of final state objects and of kinematic constraints on the latter gets larger. We compare the performances of the Metropoli...

Monte Carlo is a versatile and frequently used tool in statistical physics and beyond. Correspondingly, the number of algorithms and variants reported in the literature is vast, and an overview is not easy to achieve. In this pedagogical review, we start by presenting the probabilistic concepts which are at the basis of the Monte Carlo method. From these concepts the relevant free parameters--which still may be adjusted--are identified. Having identified these parameters, mos...

An introduction to the basics of Monte Carlo is given. The topics covered include, sample space, events, probabilities, random variables, mean, variance, covariance, characteristic function, chebyshev inequality, law of large numbers, central limit theorem (stable distribution, Levy distribution), random numbers (generation and testing), random sampling techniques (inversion, rejection, sampling from a Gaussian, Metropolis sampling), analogue Monte Carlo and Importance sampli...

This is a concise mathematical introduction to Monte Carlo methods, a rich family of algorithms with far-reaching applications in science and engineering. Monte Carlo methods are an exciting subject for mathematical statisticians and computational and applied mathematicians: the design and analysis of modern algorithms are rooted in a broad mathematical toolbox that includes ergodic theory of Markov chains, Hamiltonian dynamical systems, transport maps, stochastic differentia...

Recently the collider physics community has seen significant advances in the formalisms and implementations of event generators. This review is a primer of the methods commonly used for the simulation of high energy physics events at particle colliders. We provide brief descriptions, references, and links to the specific computer codes which implement the methods. The aim is to provide an overview of the available tools, allowing the reader to ascertain which tool is best for...

I show how to construct Monte Carlo algorithms (programs), prove that they are correct and document them. Complicated algorithms are build using a handful of elementary methods. This construction process is transparently illustrated using graphical representation in which complicated graphs consist of only several elementary building blocks. In particular I discuss the equivalent algorithms, that is different MC algorithms, with different arrangements of the elementary buildi...

These lecture notes are intended to cover some introductory topics in stochastic simulation for scientific computing courses offered by the IT department at Uppsala University, as taught by the author. Basic concepts in probability theory are provided in the Appendix A, which you may review before starting the upcoming sections or refer to as needed throughout the text.

This series of six lectures is an introduction to using the Monte Carlo method to carry out nonperturbative studies in quantum field theories. Path integrals in quantum field theory are reviewed, and their evaluation by the Monte Carlo method with Markov-chain based importance sampling is presented. Properties of Markov chains are discussed in detail and several proofs are presented, culminating in the fundamental limit theorem for irreducible Markov chains. The example of a ...