Curvature fluctuations and the Lyapunov exponent at melting

Mehra, Vishal ; Ramaswamy, Ramakrishna (1997) Curvature fluctuations and the Lyapunov exponent at melting Physical Review E - Statistical, Nonlinear and Soft Matter Physics, 56 (3). pp. 2508-2517. ISSN 1539-3755

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Official URL: http://pre.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v56/i3/p2508_1

Related URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.56.2508

Abstract

We calculate the maximal Lyapunov exponent in constant-energy molecular-dynamics simulations at the melting transition for finite clusters of 6-13 particles (model rare-gas and metallic systems) as well as for bulk rare-gas solids. For clusters, the Lyapunov exponent generally varies linearly with the total energy, but the slope changes sharply at the melting transition. In the bulk system, melting corresponds to a jump in the Lyapunov exponent, and this corresponds to a singularity in the variance of the curvature of the potential-energy surface. In these systems there are two mechanisms of chaos-local instability and parametric instability. We calculate the contribution of the parametric instability toward the chaoticity of these systems using a recently proposed formalism. The contribution of parametric instability is a continuous function of energy in small clusters but not in the bulk where the melting corresponds to a decrease in this quantity. This implies that the melting in small clusters does not lead to enhanced local instability.

Item Type:Article
Source:Copyright of this article belongs to The American Physical Society.
ID Code:45343
Deposited On:28 Jun 2011 04:47
Last Modified:18 May 2016 01:37

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