Unsupervised landmark analysis for jump detection in molecular dynamics simulations

DOI

Molecular dynamics is a versatile and powerful method to study diffusion in solid-state ionic conductors, requiring minimal prior knowledge of equilibrium or transition states of the system's free energy surface. However, the analysis of trajectories for relevant but rare events, such as a jump of the diffusing mobile ion, is still rather cumbersome, requiring prior knowledge of the diffusive process in order to get meaningful results. In this work we present a novel approach to detect the relevant events in a diffusive system without assuming prior information regarding the underlying process. We start from a projection of the atomic coordinates into a landmark basis to identify the dominant features in a mobile ion's environment. Subsequent clustering in landmark space enables a discretization of any trajectory into a sequence of distinct states. As a final step, the use of the Smooth Overlap of Atomic Positions descriptor allows distinguishing between different environments in a straightforward way. We apply this algorithm to ten Li-ionic systems and conduct in-depth analyses of cubic Li7La3Zr2O12, tetragonal Li10GeP2S12, and the β-eucryptite LiAlSiO4. We compare our results to existing methods, underscoring strong points, weaknesses, and insights into the diffusive behavior of the ionic conduction in the materials investigated.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.24435/materialscloud:2019.0008/v1
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.055404
Related Identifier https://archive.materialscloud.org/communities/mcarchive
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.24435/materialscloud:w7-pv
Metadata Access https://archive.materialscloud.org/oai2d?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifier=oai:materialscloud.org:102
Provenance
Creator Kahle, Leonid; Musaelian, Albert; Marzari, Nicola; Kozinsky, Boris
Publisher Materials Cloud
Contributor Kahle, Leonid
Publication Year 2019
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
OpenAccess true
Contact archive(at)materialscloud.org
Representation
Language English
Resource Type info:eu-repo/semantics/other
Format text/plain; application/gzip; text/markdown
Discipline Materials Science and Engineering