Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 21, 2025

Computation of Atmospheric Concentrations of Molecular Clusters from ab initio Thermochemistry
Published on: April 8, 2020
Energy-preserving coupling of explicit particle-in-cell with Monte Carlo collisions
Jean-Luc Vay1, Justin Ray Angus2, Olga Shapoval1
1Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
Abstract:
The particle-in-cell (PIC) and Monte Carlo collisions (MCC) methods are workhorses of many numerical simulations of physical systems. Recently, it was pointed out that, while the two methods can be exactly-or nearly-energy-conserving independently, combining the two leads to anomalous numerical heating. This paper reviews the standard explicit PIC-MCC algorithm, elucidates the origins of the anomalous numerical heating, and explains how to couple the two methods such that the anomalous numerical heating is avoided.
More Related Videos
06:37Analyzing Melts and Fluids from Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Simulations with the UMD Package
Published on: September 17, 2021
10:52Multiscale Sampling of a Heterogeneous Water/Metal Catalyst Interface using Density Functional Theory and Force-Field Molecular Dynamics
Published on: April 12, 2019
Related Concept Videos
Equilibrium Conditions for a Particle
To understand the concept of equilibrium, let us first consider the forces acting on an object. When different forces act on an object, they can...
Elastic Collisions: Introduction
Energy Conservation and Bernoulli's Equation
All the terms in the equation have the dimension of energy per unit volume. The kinetic energy per unit volume is called the kinetic energy density, and the potential energy per unit volume is...
Conservation of Linear Momentum for a System of Particles
The impulsive force at play during this interaction is of extremely short duration, rendering its impulse negligible. When...
Equation of Motion: Center of Mass
Internal forces between any pair of particles manifest as collinear pairs of equal magnitude but opposite directions,...
Molecular Kinetic Energy