skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Long-time dynamics through parallel trajectory splicing

Journal Article · · Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation
 [1];  [2];  [2];  [2];  [1]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  2. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)

Simulating the atomistic evolution of materials over long time scales is a longstanding challenge, especially for complex systems where the distribution of barrier heights is very heterogeneous. Such systems are difficult to investigate using conventional long-time scale techniques, and the fact that they tend to remain trapped in small regions of configuration space for extended periods of time strongly limits the physical insights gained from short simulations. We introduce a novel simulation technique, Parallel Trajectory Splicing (ParSplice), that aims at addressing this problem through the timewise parallelization of long trajectories. The computational efficiency of ParSplice stems from a speculation strategy whereby predictions of the future evolution of the system are leveraged to increase the amount of work that can be concurrently performed at any one time, hence improving the scalability of the method. ParSplice is also able to accurately account for, and potentially reuse, a substantial fraction of the computational work invested in the simulation. We validate the method on a simple Ag surface system and demonstrate substantial increases in efficiency compared to previous methods. As a result, we then demonstrate the power of ParSplice through the study of topology changes in Ag42Cu13 core–shell nanoparticles.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
CCF-1438983; 2012116808; AC52-06NA25396
OSTI ID:
1239568
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-15-27573
Journal Information:
Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, Vol. 12, Issue 1; ISSN 1549-9618
Publisher:
American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 54 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (22)

Résolution d'EDP par un schéma en temps «pararéel » journal April 2001
Hyperdynamics: Accelerated Molecular Dynamics of Infrequent Events journal May 1997
Parallel replica method for dynamics of infrequent events journal June 1998
Temperature-accelerated dynamics for simulation of infrequent events journal June 2000
Accelerated molecular dynamics: A promising and efficient simulation method for biomolecules journal June 2004
A mathematical formalization of the parallel replica dynamics journal January 2012
Numerical analysis of parallel replica dynamics journal July 2013
Multiple-Time Scale Accelerated Molecular Dynamics: Addressing the Small-Barrier Problem journal September 2004
Computing time scales from reaction coordinates by milestoning journal June 2004
Forward flux sampling for rare event simulations journal October 2009
Investigating rare events by transition interface sampling journal September 2004
Everything you wanted to know about Markov State Models but were afraid to ask journal September 2010
Statistical mechanics of isomerization dynamics in liquids and the transition state approximation journal January 1978
Dynamical corrections to transition state theory for multistate systems: Surface self‐diffusion in the rare‐event regime journal January 1985
The parallel replica dynamics method – Coming of age journal April 2015
Kinetic activation-relaxation technique: An off-lattice self-learning kinetic Monte Carlo algorithm journal October 2008
Symmetry breaking and morphological instabilities in core-shell metallic nanoparticles journal December 2014
Growth simulations of silver shells on copper and palladium nanoclusters journal October 2002
Growth of Three-Shell Onionlike Bimetallic Nanoparticles journal April 2003
An embedded-atom potential for the Cu–Ag system journal May 2006
Symmetrizer: Algorithmic determination of point groups in nearly symmetric molecules journal May 2012
Identifying Structural Flow Defects in Disordered Solids Using Machine-Learning Methods journal March 2015

Cited By (11)

Self-optimized construction of transition rate matrices from accelerated atomistic simulations with Bayesian uncertainty quantification journal May 2018
Path-accelerated stochastic molecular dynamics: Parallel-in-time integration using path integrals journal October 2019
Reaction pathways in atomistic models of thin film growth journal October 2017
Combining Machine Learning and Physics to Understand Glassy Systems journal June 2018
Cluster analysis of accelerated molecular dynamics simulations: A case study of the decahedron to icosahedron transition in Pt nanoparticles journal October 2017
Long-time molecular dynamics simulations on massively parallel platforms: A comparison of parallel replica dynamics and parallel trajectory splicing journal December 2017
Speculation and replication in temperature accelerated dynamics journal February 2018
The mobility of small vacancy/helium complexes in tungsten and its impact on retention in fusion-relevant conditions journal May 2017
Representations in neural network based empirical potentials journal July 2017
Computing long time scale biomolecular dynamics using quasi-stationary distribution kinetic Monte Carlo (QSD-KMC) journal August 2019
Evidence for percolation diffusion of cations and reordering in disordered pyrochlore from accelerated molecular dynamics journal September 2017

Similar Records

Long-time molecular dynamics simulations on massively parallel platforms: A comparison of parallel replica dynamics and parallel trajectory splicing
Journal Article · Wed Dec 20 00:00:00 EST 2017 · Journal of Materials Research · OSTI ID:1239568

Accelerated molecular dynamics simulations of dislocation climb in nickel
Journal Article · Mon Aug 09 00:00:00 EDT 2021 · Physical Review Materials · OSTI ID:1239568

ParSplice, Version 1
Software · Thu Jan 05 00:00:00 EST 2017 · OSTI ID:1239568

Related Subjects