Lattice field theory methods, usually associated with non-perturbative
studies of quantum chromodynamics, are becoming increasingly common in the
calculation of ground-state and thermal properties of strongly interacting
non-relativistic few- and many-body systems, blurring the interfaces between
condensed matter, atomic and low-energy nuclear physics. While some of these
techniques have been in use in the area of condensed matter physics for a long
time, others, such as hybrid Monte Carlo and improved effective actions, have
only recently found their way across areas. With this topical review, we aim to
provide a modest overview and a status update on a few notable recent
developments. For the sake of brevity we focus on zero-temperature,
non-relativistic problems. After a short introduction, we lay out some general
considerations and proceed to discuss sampling algorithms, observables, and
systematic effects. We show selected results on ground- and excited-state
properties of fermions in the limit of unitarity. The appendix contains details
on group theory on the lattice.Comment: 64 pages, 32 figures; topical review for J. Phys. G; replaced with
published versio
