Numerical integration of the equations of motion for rigid polyatomics: The matrix method

A new algorithm for numerical integration of the rigid-body equations of motion is proposed. The algorithm uses the leapfrog scheme and the quantities involved are angular velocities and orientational variables which can be expressed in terms of either principal axes or quaternions. Due to specific features of the algorithm, orthonormality and unit norms of the orientational variables are integrals of motion, despite an approximate character of the produced trajectories. It i...

The Stoermer-Verlet-leapfrog group of integrators commonly used in molecular dynamics simulations has long become a textbook subject and seems to have been studied exhaustively. There are, however, a few striking effects in performance of algorithms which are well-known but have not received adequate attention in the literature. A closer view of these unclear observations results in unexpected conclusions. It is shown here that contrary to the conventional point of view, the ...

In this work we introduce a geometric integrator for molecular dynamics simulations of physical systems in the canonical ensemble. In particular, we consider the equations arising from the so-called density dynamics algorithm with any possible type of thermostat and provide an integrator that preserves the invariant distribution. Our integrator thus constitutes a unified framework that allows the study and comparison of different thermostats and of their influence on the equi...

We have presented some practical consequences on the molecular-dynamics simulations arising from the numerical algorithm published recently in paper Int. J. Mod. Phys. C 16, 413 (2005). The algorithm is not a finite-difference method and therefore it could be complementary to the traditional numerical integrating of the motion equations. It consists of two steps. First, an analytic form of polynomials in some formal parameter $\lambda$ (we put $\lambda=1$ after all) is derive...

We present methods for exploratory studies of molecular dynamics using MATLAB. Such methods are not suitable for large scale applications, but they can be used for developement and testing of new types of interactions and other aspects of the simulations, or simply for instruction and education purposes. We also present exploration of forces obtained from 3-body potentials in Molecular Dynamics in this framework. The methods are based on use of matrices and multidimensional a...

We present a new molecular-dynamics algorithm for integrating the equations of motion for a system of particles interacting with mixed continuous/impulsive forces. This method, which we call Impulsive Verlet, is constructed using operator splitting techniques similar to those that have been used successfully to generate a variety molecular-dynamics integrators. In numerical experiments, the Impulsive Verlet method is shown to be superior to previous methods with respect to st...

An approach is proposed to improve the efficiency of fourth-order algorithms for numerical integration of the equations of motion in molecular dynamics simulations. The approach is based on an extension of the decomposition scheme by introducing extra evolution subpropagators. The extended set of parameters of the integration is then determined by reducing the norm of truncation terms to a minimum. In such a way, we derive new explicit symplectic Forest-Ruth- and Suzuki-like ...

The earliest molecular dynamics simulations relied on solving the Newtonian or equivalently the Hamiltonian equations of motion for a system. While pedagogically very important as the total energy is preserved in these simulations, they lack any relationship with real-life experiments, as most of these tests are performed in a constant temperature environment that allows energy exchanges. So, within the framework of molecular dynamics, the Newtonian evolution equations need t...

A new methodology is developed to integrate numerically the equations of motion for classical many-body systems in molecular dynamics simulations. Its distinguishable feature is the possibility to preserve, independently on the size of the time step, all the conservation laws inherent in the description without breaking the time reversibility. As a result, an implicit second-order algorithm is derived and applied to pure as well as spin liquids for which the dynamics is chara...

The Verlet method is still widely used to integrate the equations of motion in ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. We show that the stability limit of the Verlet method may be significantly increased by setting an upper limit on the kinetic energy of each atom with only a small loss in accuracy. The validity of this approach is demonstrated for molten lithium fluoride.