Computation of X-ray and Neutron Scattering Patterns to Benchmark Atomistic Simulations against Experiments

Molecular Dynamics simulations study material structure and dynamics at the atomic level. X-ray and neutron scattering experiments probe exactly the same time- and length scales as the simulations. In order to benchmark simulations against measured scattering data, a program is required that compute...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Arnab Majumdar, Martin Müller, Sebastian Busch
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024-01-01
Series:International Journal of Molecular Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/25/3/1547
Description
Summary:Molecular Dynamics simulations study material structure and dynamics at the atomic level. X-ray and neutron scattering experiments probe exactly the same time- and length scales as the simulations. In order to benchmark simulations against measured scattering data, a program is required that computes scattering patterns from simulations with good single-core performance and support for parallelization. In this work, the existing program Sassena is used as a potent solution to this requirement for a range of scattering methods, covering pico- to nanosecond dynamics, as well as the structure from some Ångströms to hundreds of nanometers. In the case of nanometer-level structures, the finite size of the simulation box, which is referred to as the <i>finite size effect</i>, has to be factored into the computations for which a method is described and implemented into Sassena. Additionally, the single-core and parallelization performance of Sassena is investigated, and several improvements are introduced.
ISSN:1661-6596
1422-0067