  This chapter is devoted to the computation of equilibrium (thermodynamic)
properties of quantum systems. In particular, we will be interested in the
situation where the interaction between particles is so strong that it cannot
be treated as a small perturbation. For weakly coupled systems many efficient
theoretical and computational techniques do exist. However, for strongly
interacting systems such as nonideal gases or plasmas, strongly correlated
electrons and so on, perturbation methods fail and alternative approaches are
needed. Among them, an extremely successful one is the Monte Carlo (MC) method
which we are going to consider in this chapter.
