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66 records · Page 4

Coordinate versus momentum cuts and effects of collective flow on critical fluctuations

We analyze particle number fluctuations in the crossover region near the critical endpoint of a first-order phase transition by utilizing molecular dynamics simulations of the classical Lennard-Jones fluid. We extend our previous study [V. A. Kuznietsov , ] by incorporating longitudinal collective flow. The scaled variance of particle number distribution inside different coordinate and momentum space acceptances is computed through ensemble averaging and found to agree with earlier results obtained using time averaging, validating the ergodic hypothesis for fluctuation observables. Presence of a sizable collective flow is found to be essential for observing large fluctuations from the critical point in momentum space acceptances. We discuss our findings in the context of heavy-ion collisions. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

From canyons to valleys: Numerically continuing sticky-hard-sphere clusters to the landscapes of smoother potentials

Here, we study the energy landscapes of particles with short-range attractive interactions as the range of the interactions increases. Starting with the set of local minima for 6 ≤ $\textit{N}$ ≤ 12 hard spheres that are “sticky,” i.e., they interact only when their surfaces are exactly in contact, we use numerical continuation to evolve the local minima (clusters) as the range of the potential increases, using both the Lennard-Jones and Morse families of interaction potentials. As the range increases, clusters merge, until at long ranges only one or two clusters are left. We compare clusters obtained by continuation with different potentials and find that for short and medium ranges, up to about 30% of particle diameter, the continued clusters are nearly identical, both within and across families of potentials. For longer ranges, the clusters vary significantly, with more variation between families of potentials than within a family. We analyze the mechanisms behind the merge events and find that most rearrangements occur when a pair of nonbonded particles comes within the range of the potential. An exception occurs for nonharmonic clusters, i.e., those that have a zero eigenvalue in their Hessian, which undergo a more global rearrangement.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Spatiotemporal mapping of mesoscopic liquid dynamics

The study of liquid dynamics at mesoscopic scales is still strewn with difficulty due to limitations in theory and experiment. Historically, significant attention has been given to the analysis of space-time correlation functions and their frequency-Fourier transforms at a few discrete wave numbers. The massive computing power afforded by modern high performance computing clusters and the advent of a wide-angle neutron spin-echo spectrometer, however, have unlocked a more intuitive and fruitful approach to this problem. Using molecular dynamics simulations, here we demonstrate the benefits of spatiotemporally mapping intermediate scattering functions on a dense grid of correlation times and wave numbers. Four model systems are investigated: a Lennard-Jones liquid, a coarse-grained bead-spring polymer, a molten sodium chloride, and a poly(ethylene oxide) melt. We show that the spatiotemporal mapping approach is particularly useful for elucidating the mesoscopic dynamics in these liquids, where several underlying mechanisms, such as molecular relaxations, hydrodynamic modes, and nonhydrodynamic excitations, are potentially at play. Therefore, compared to the traditional method, direct visualization of density space-time correlation functions on two-dimensional color maps permits appraisals of complicated dynamical behavior at mesoscales in a global manner. For example, the scaling relations between space and time for different types of molecular motions can be straightforwardly identified on these plots, without any model-dependent analysis. Additionally, we show how theoretical ideas regarding collective mesoscopic dynamics, such as the classical hydrodynamic theory, the convolution approximation, and a recently proposed phenomenological model, can be discussed in terms of the global features of spatiotemporal maps of intermediate scattering functions. The new perspective offered by the spatiotemporal mapping method should prove useful for the study of liquid dynamics in general.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Machine learning of consistent thermodynamic models using automatic differentiation

In this study, we propose a data-driven method to describe consistent equations of state (EOS) for arbitrary systems. Complex EOS are traditionally obtained by fitting suitable analytical expressions to thermophysical data. A key aspect of EOS is that the relationships between state variables are given by derivatives of the system free energy. In this work, we model the free energy with an artificial neural network and utilize automatic differentiation to directly learn the derivatives of the free energy. We demonstrate this approach on two different systems, the analytic van der Waals EOS and published data for the Lennard-Jones fluid, and we show that it is advantageous over direct learning of thermodynamic properties (i.e., not as derivatives of the free energy but as independent properties), in terms of both accuracy and the exact preservation of the Maxwell relations. Furthermore, the method implicitly provides the free energy of a system without explicit integration.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Atomic dynamics in fluids: Normal mode analysis revisited

Developing microscopic understanding of the thermal properties of liquids is challenging due to their strong dynamic disorder, which prevents characterization of the atomic degrees of freedom. There have been significant research interests in the past few decades to extend the normal mode analysis for solids to instantaneous structures of liquids. However, the nature of normal modes that arise from these unstable structures is still elusive. Here, in this paper, we explore the instantaneous eigenmodes of dynamical matrices of various Lennard-Jones argon liquid and gas systems at high temperatures and show that the normal modes can be interpreted as an interpolation of T →∞ (gas) and T=0 (solid) mode descriptions. We find that normal modes become increasingly collisional and translational, recovering atomistic gaslike behavior rather than vibrational with increase in temperature, suggesting that normal modes in liquids may be described by both solidlike and gaslike modes.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Simulations of classical three-body thermalization in one dimension

One-dimensional systems, such as nanowires or electrons moving along strong magnetic field lines, have peculiar thermalization physics. The binary collision of pointlike particles, typically the dominant process for reaching thermal equilibrium in higher-dimensional systems, cannot thermalize a 1D system. We study how dilute classical 1D gases thermalize through three-body collisions. We consider a system of identical classical point particles with pairwise repulsive inverse power-law potential V ij ∝ 1/|x i –x j | n or the pairwise Lennard-Jones potential. Using Monte Carlo methods, we compute a collision kernel and use it in the Boltzmann equation to evolve a perturbed thermal state with temperature T toward equilibrium. We explain the shape of the kernel and its dependence on the system parameters. Additionally, we implement molecular dynamics simulations of a many-body gas and show agreement with the Boltzmann evolution in the low-density limit. For the inverse power-law potential, the rate of thermalization is proportional to ρ 2 ⁢T$\frac{1}{2}$ – $\frac{1}{n}$, where ρ is the number density. Furthermore, the corresponding proportionality constant decreases with increasing n.

1-dimensional systems↗

Observation of High-Frequency Transverse Phonons in Metallic Glasses

Here, using inelastic neutron scattering and molecular dynamics simulations on a model Zr-Cu-Al metallic glass, we show that transverse phonons persist well into the high-frequency regime, and can be detected at large momentum transfer. Furthermore, the apparent peak width of the transverse phonons was found to follow the static structure factor. The one-to-one correspondence, which was demonstrated for both Zr-Cu-Al metallic glass and a three-dimensional Lennard-Jones model glass, suggests a universal correlation between the phonon dynamics and the underlying disordered structure. This remarkable correlation, not found for longitudinal phonons, underscores the key role that transverse phonons hold for understanding the structure-dynamics relationship in disordered materials.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

High-order cumulants and correlation functions near the critical point from molecular dynamics

We present a systematic investigation of particle-number fluctuations in the crossover region near the critical end point of a first-order phase transition using molecular dynamics simulations of the classical Lennard-Jones fluid. We extend our prior studies to third- and fourth-order cumulants in both coordinate- and momentum-space acceptances and integrated correlation functions (factorial cumulants). We find that, even near the critical point, non-Gaussian cumulants equilibrate on timescales comparable to those of the second-order cumulants, but show stronger finite-size effects. The presence of interactions and of the critical point leads to strong deviations of the cumulants from the ideal-gas baseline in coordinate space; these deviations are expected to persist in momentum space in the presence of collective expansion. In particular, the kurtosis becomes strongly negative, κσ 2 ≪ − 1 , on the crossover side of the critical point. However, this signal is significantly diluted once an efficiency cut used to distinguish protons from baryons is applied, leading to |κσ 2 | ≲ 1 even in the presence of the critical point. We discuss our results in the context of ongoing measurements of proton-number cumulants in heavy-ion collisions in RHIC-BES-II.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Measurements of He-Ar, He-N 2 , and He-air thermal creep slip and accommodation coefficients at high temperatures

Understanding gas flows in capillaries has many applications in modeling the transport of gases in nano-structured, porous, or fractured media. A network of capillaries can often approximate these media, and also information on gas-surface interactions obtained from capillary experiments can be used for modeling flows in these media. Experimental data on flows of different mixtures of He-Ar, He-N 2 , and He-air in the slip regime and in stainless steel capillaries at high temperatures were obtained by using a two-bulb apparatus. An accurate expression for the thermal creep slip coefficients with the Lennard-Jones potential parameters and diffuse-specular reflection gas-surface interaction conditions were then used to obtain the accommodation coefficients for the different gases. The experimental data are best described with values of accommodation coefficients in the range of 0.1–0.3 for He and 0.5–1.0 for Ar, N 2 , and air. Further, the use of values in this range is suggested for modeling gaseous flows in capillaries and nano-structured, porous, or fractured media if other direct measured values for a particular medium are unavailable.

42 ENGINEERING↗

ORNL/MLMC

Multi-Level Monte Carlo Methods in Chemical Applications with Lennard-Jones Potentials and other Landscapes with Isolated Singularities

Bocchinfuso, Alberto (0000000260634131)↗

Large-Scale Atomistic Simulations: Investigating Free Expansion

The experiment investigates free expansion of a supercritical fluid into a two-phase liquid-vapor coexistence region. A huge molecular dynamics simulation (6 billion Lennard-Jones atoms) was run on 5760 GPUs (33% of LLNL Sierra) using LAMMPS/Kokkos software. This improved visualization workflow and started preliminary simulations of aluminum using SNAP machine learning potential.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Droplet Evaporation-Based Approach for Microliter Fuel Property Measurements

Small-volume, high-throughput screening techniques are sought to enable downselection from a large candidate pool of bio-blendstocks to a select few, having physical properties consistent with requirements of downsized, turbo-boosted internal combustion engines. Herein, this work presents a droplet evaporation-based approach to predict heat of vaporization, vapor pressure, diffusion coefficient, and Lennard–Jones parameters for an unknown fuel. Two different schemes, considering the isothermal evaporation of a moving droplet in ambient air, are proposed, which combine droplet velocity and temperature measurements, with some known properties to predict unknown properties. The schemes utilize an inverse solution of a transient model of droplet evaporation solved in an iterative fashion. A baseline scheme, which only requires droplet size change measurements, is evaluated using test data for three liquid fuels, comprising of alkanes and alcohols, as obtained in a temperature-controlled chamber. Results yield temperature-dependent heat of vaporization and vapor pressure predictions within 10 % and 22 %, respectively, of reference values. The advanced scheme, which additionally requires droplet temperature measurement, is numerically evaluated in the current work and will be experimentally validated in future efforts. The advanced scheme is found to significantly improve prediction quality, with deviations less than 2 % and 1 % for heat of vaporization and vapor pressure, while also predicting diffusion coefficient and Lennard–Jones parameters within 5 % and 8 %, respectively. The combined set of approaches, which primarily track droplet evaporation, can be incorporated into a small-volume, high-throughput fuel screening process.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗