I am very interested in using a CAS to work on solving complicated
exactly solvable quantum mechanics problems - if possible relating to
few body scattering. I am unsure if Maxima is a reasonable way to
proceed. That is, is there any way to compare Maxima's abilities with
Maple's, or Mathematica's - for that matter Axiom's? The comparisons I
have viewed are extremely dated, 1990 - especially with the growth of
this type of software. I don't want, if possible, to use Maxima only to
find that it has serious limitations compared to these other CAS.
The only program I have created thus far is an arbitrary precision
Gaussian quadrature program for a specific weight function e^(-bx)/(x+a)
( useful for time evolution when viewing it as a contour integral). I
used sums of gamma functions and Lagguerre polynomials. I made it 1st
for Mathematica and then for Maxima. Both work, it took a little more
time for Maxima to solve for a greater number of points, 100 or so, in
the integration because it's eigenvalue programs are not as
sophisticated as Mathematica's or at least were not when I made the
programs 4 months ago for Maxima and a year ago for Mathematica.
However I am sure if I used an outside source to compute the eigenvalues
with Maxima they would be comparable.
thanks
Yigal