Most cited papers in Theoretical and Computational Physics
What are the most cited papers in Theoretical and Computational Physics?
The most cited paper in Theoretical and Computational Physics is "Optimization by Simulated Annealing" (Scott Kirkpatrick, C. D. Gelatt, Mario P. Vecchi, 1983), with 45,251 citations. Next come "Particle mesh Ewald: An N ⋅log( N ) method for Ewald sums in large systems" (31,396) and "Canonical sampling through velocity rescaling" (19,040).
Showing 50 of 100 papers. Every paper with more than 2,064 citations is listed.
| # | Paper | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Optimization by Simulated Annealing Scott Kirkpatrick, C. D. Gelatt, Mario P. Vecchi · Science | 13 May 1983 | 45,251 |
| 2 | Particle mesh Ewald: An N ⋅log( N ) method for Ewald sums in large systems Tom Darden, Darrin M. York, Lee G. Pedersen · The Journal of Chemical Physics | 15 Jun 1993 | 31,396 |
| 3 | Canonical sampling through velocity rescaling Giovanni Bussi, Davide Donadio, Michele Parrinello · The Journal of Chemical Physics | 3 Jan 2007 | 19,040 |
| 4 | Visualization and analysis of atomistic simulation data with OVITO–the Open Visualization Tool Alexander Stukowski · Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering | 15 Dec 2009 | 16,794 |
| 5 | Free Energy of a Nonuniform System. I. Interfacial Free Energy John W. Cahn, J. E. Hilliard · The Journal of Chemical Physics | Feb 1958 | 10,487 |
| 6 | Ordering, metastability and phase transitions in two-dimensional systems J. Michael Kosterlitz, D. J. Thouless · Journal of Physics C Solid State Physics | 12 Apr 1973 | 9,586 |
| 7 | Absence of Ferromagnetism or Antiferromagnetism in One- or Two-Dimensional Isotropic Heisenberg Models N. David Mermin, Hermann‐Josef Wagner · Physical Review Letters | 28 Nov 1966 | 8,374 |
| 8 | Pattern formation outside of equilibrium M. C. Cross, Pierre C. Hohenberg · Reviews of Modern Physics | Jul 1993 | 7,918 |
| 9 | Theory of dynamic critical phenomena Pierre C. Hohenberg, Bertrand I. Halperin · Reviews of Modern Physics | Jul 1977 | 6,962 |
| 10 | A thermodynamic theory of “weak” ferromagnetism of antiferromagnetics I. Dzyaloshinsky · Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids | 1958 | 6,337 |
| 11 | Nonphysical sampling distributions in Monte Carlo free-energy estimation: Umbrella sampling Glenn M. Torrie, John P. Valleau · Journal of Computational Physics | Feb 1977 | 6,323 |
| 12 | Vortices in high-temperature superconductors G. Blatter, Mikhail V. Feigel'man, V. B. Geshkenbeǐn et al. · Reviews of Modern Physics | Oct 1994 | 6,270 |
| 13 | Scaling Theory of Localization: Absence of Quantum Diffusion in Two Dimensions Elihu Abrahams, Philip Warren Anderson, Donald C. Licciardello et al. · Physical Review Letters | 5 Mar 1979 | 6,169 |
| 14 | Exactly Solved Models in Statistical Mechanics R. J. Baxter · Series on advances in statistical mechanics | May 1985 | 5,807 |
| 15 | Monte Carlo Statistical Methods Hoon Kim, Christian P. Robert, George Casella · Technometrics | Nov 2000 | 5,603 |
| 16 | Dynamic Scaling of Growing Interfaces Mehran Kardar, Giorgio Parisi, Yi-Cheng Zhang · Physical Review Letters | 3 Mar 1986 | 5,494 |
| 17 | Nonequilibrium Equality for Free Energy Differences Christopher Jarzynski · Physical Review Letters | 7 Apr 1997 | 5,427 |
| 18 | Diffusion-Limited Aggregation, a Kinetic Critical Phenomenon Thomas A. Witten, Leonard M. Sander · Physical Review Letters | 9 Nov 1981 | 5,387 |
| 19 | Percolation and Conduction Scott Kirkpatrick · Reviews of Modern Physics | Oct 1973 | 5,252 |
| 20 | Spin glasses: Experimental facts, theoretical concepts, and open questions Kurt Binder, Alan P Young · Reviews of Modern Physics | Oct 1986 | 5,231 |
| 21 | The renormalization group and the ε expansion Kenneth G. Wilson · Physics Reports | Aug 1974 | 5,222 |
| 22 | Formation of Glasses from Liquids and Biopolymers C. A. Angell · Science | 31 Mar 1995 | 4,811 |
| 23 | Self-organized criticality Per Bak, Chao Tang, Kurt A. Wiesenfeld · Physical Review A | Jul 1988 | 4,775 |
| 24 | Structure and Dynamics of the TIP3P, SPC, and SPC/E Water Models at 298 K Pekka Mark, Lennart Nilsson · The Journal of Physical Chemistry A | 6 Oct 2001 | 4,705 |
| 25 | Supercooled liquids and the glass transition Pablo G. Debenedetti, Frank H. Stillinger · Nature | 8 Mar 2001 | 4,670 |
| 26 | Transport, Collective Motion, and Brownian Motion Hazime Mori · Progress of Theoretical Physics | Mar 1965 | 4,628 |
| 27 | The renormalization group: Critical phenomena and the Kondo problem Kenneth G. Wilson · Reviews of Modern Physics | Oct 1975 | 4,558 |
| 28 | Dissipative particle dynamics: Bridging the gap between atomistic and mesoscopic simulation Robert D. Groot, Patrick B. Warren · The Journal of Chemical Physics | 15 Sep 1997 | 4,550 |
| 29 | Spin liquids in frustrated magnets Leon Balents · Nature | 9 Mar 2010 | 4,411 |
| 30 | Two soluble models of an antiferromagnetic chain Elliott Lieb, T. D. Schultz, Daniel Charles Mattis · Annals of Physics | Dec 1961 | 4,350 |
| 31 | Solvable Model of a Spin-Glass David C. Sherrington, Scott Kirkpatrick · Physical Review Letters | 29 Dec 1975 | 4,332 |
| 32 | Anomalous diffusion in disordered media: Statistical mechanisms, models and physical applications Jean‐Philippe Bouchaud, Antoine Georges · Physics Reports | Nov 1990 | 4,213 |
| 33 | Hybrid Monte Carlo Simon Duane, Anthony D. Kennedy, Brian J. Pendleton et al. · Physics Letters B | Sep 1987 | 3,975 |
| 34 | Simulating Microscopic Hydrodynamic Phenomena with Dissipative Particle Dynamics P. J. Hoogerbrugge, J. M. V. A. Koelman · Europhysics Letters (EPL) | Jun 1992 | 3,833 |
| 35 | Time-Dependent Statistics of the Ising Model Roy J. Glauber · Journal of Mathematical Physics | Feb 1963 | 3,668 |
| 36 | Routine Microsecond Molecular Dynamics Simulations with AMBER on GPUs. 2. Explicit Solvent Particle Mesh Ewald Romelia Salomón–Ferrer, Andreas W. Götz, Duncan Poole et al. · Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation | 6 Aug 2013 | 3,629 |
| 37 | The Potts model Fa Yueh Wu · Reviews of Modern Physics | 1982 | 3,604 |
| 38 | On spinodal decomposition John W. Cahn · Acta Metallurgica | Sep 1961 | 3,597 |
| 39 | Boson localization and the superfluid-insulator transition Matthew P. A. Fisher, Peter B. Weichman, G. Grinstein et al. · Physical review. B, Condensed matter | Jul 1989 | 3,529 |
| 40 | Bond-orientational order in liquids and glasses Paul Joseph Steinhardt, David R. Nelson, Marco Ronchetti · Physical review. B, Condensed matter | 15 Jul 1983 | 3,506 |
| 41 | Anomalous low-temperature thermal properties of glasses and spin glasses Philip Warren Anderson, B. I. Halperin, C. M. Varma · Philosophical magazine | 1972 | 3,504 |
| 42 | Diluted magnetic semiconductors J. K. Furdyna · Journal of Applied Physics | 15 Aug 1988 | 3,489 |
| 43 | Thermodynamical approach to the traveling salesman problem: An efficient simulation algorithm V. Černý · Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications | 1985 | 3,448 |
| 44 | Well-Tempered Metadynamics: A Smoothly Converging and Tunable Free-Energy Method Alessandro Barducci, Giovanni Bussi, Michele Parrinello · Physical Review Letters | 18 Jan 2008 | 3,391 |
| 45 | Fractal Concepts in Surface Growth Albert-Ĺaszló Barabási, Harry Eugene Stanley, Leonard M. Sander · Physics Today | Oct 1995 | 3,343 |
| 46 | Chaos and quantum thermalization Mark Srednicki · Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics | Aug 1994 | 3,285 |
| 47 | Ensemble samplers with affine invariance Jonathan B. Goodman, Jonathan Weare · Communications in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science | 31 Jan 2010 | 3,183 |
| 48 | The penetration of a fluid into a porous medium or Hele-Shaw cell containing a more viscous liquid Philip Geoffrey Saffman, Geoffrey Ingram Taylor · Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A Mathematical and Physical Sciences | 24 Jun 1958 | 3,174 |
| 49 | Statistical mechanics of cellular automata Stephen Wolfram · Reviews of Modern Physics | Jul 1983 | 3,158 |
| 50 | Electrical resistance of disordered one-dimensional lattices Rolf W. Landauer · Philosophical magazine | Apr 1970 | 3,066 |
Citations are OpenAlex's own counts, from its 2026-09-23 snapshot, so the ranking can differ from Google Scholar or Web of Science. A paper is listed for a field when OpenAlex files it under one of the field's topics; retracted papers and papers whose citation count cannot be traced to citing works are left out, and a preprint and the article it became are shown once. Release dates are OpenAlex's: where a source gave only a month or a year, that is what is shown. How the lists are chosen.