Copyright © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Pathfinder: A parallel search algorithm for concerted atomistic events
Received 26 October 2006;
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Abstract
An algorithm has been designed to search for the escape paths with the lowest activation barriers when starting from a local minimum-energy configuration of a many-atom system. The pathfinder algorithm combines: (1) a steered eigenvector-following method that guides a constrained escape from the convex region and subsequently climbs to a transition state tangentially to the eigenvector corresponding to the lowest negative Hessian eigenvalue; (2) discrete abstraction of the atomic configuration to systematically enumerate concerted events as linear combinations of atomistic events; (3) evolutionary control of the population dynamics of low activation-barrier events; and (4) hybrid task + spatial decompositions to implement massive search for complex events on parallel computers. The program exhibits good scalability on parallel computers and has been used to study concerted bond-breaking events in the fracture of alumina.
Keywords: Transition state theory; Molecular dynamics; Parallel computing
PACS classification codes: 02.70.-c; 02.70.Ns; 82.20.Db
Article Outline
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Pathfinder algorithm
- 2.1. Steered eigenvector-following (SEF) event generator
- 2.2. Concerted event generation by discrete linear combination of atomistic events (LCAE)
- 3. Parallelization by hybrid task + spatial decompositions (HTSD)
- 4. Numerical results
- 5. Summary
- Acknowledgements
- Appendix A. Lanczos algorithm to obtain the minimal Hessian eigenpair
- References







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