Efficient swap algorithms for molecular dynamics simulations of equilibrium supercooled liquids

L Berthier and E Flenner and CJ Fullerton and C Scalliet and M Singh, JOURNAL OF STATISTICAL MECHANICS-THEORY AND EXPERIMENT, 2019, 064004 (2019).

DOI: 10.1088/1742-5468/ab1910

It was recently demonstrated that a simple Monte Carlo (MC) algorithm involving the swap of particle pairs dramatically accelerates the equilibrium sampling of simulated supercooled liquids. We propose two numerical schemes integrating the efficiency of particle swaps into equilibrium molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We first develop a hybrid MD/MC scheme combining molecular dynamics with the original swap Monte Carlo. We implement this hybrid method in LAMMPS, a software package employed by a large community of users. Secondly, we define a continuous time version of the swap algorithm where both the positions and diameters of the particles evolve via Hamilton's equations of motion. For both algorithms, we discuss in detail various technical issues as well as the optimisation of simulation parameters. We compare the numerical efficiency of all available swap algorithms and discuss their relative merits.

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