Buffon's Brownian needles: harnessing thermal motion for stochastic sampling
We demonstrate a physical implementation of Monte Carlo sampling using the Brownian motion of microscopic rods, applied to the classical Buffon's needle experiment. In this way, a problem in geometric probability is mapped onto a Monte Carlo method, with a physical system performing key aspects of the computation. The experiment's parameters are embedded directly: the rods length encodes the probability integral, while their thermal motion supplies the sampling. Although only a toy-model system, this approach illustrates how embedding probabilistic structure into soft matter can provide a low-energy pathway for stochastic computation that exploits freely available thermal noise.
Authors
- Lindsey Nicholson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0430-7950)
- Charlie Maslen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2995-0918)
- Juliane Simmchen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9073-9770)
Institutions
- University of Strathclyde (GB)
- Technische Universität Dresden (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Soft Matter
- Published
- 2025-01-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1039/d5sm00844a
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.32