Applications of the Generalised Langevin Equation: towards a realistic description of the baths

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how the Generalised Langevin Equation (GLE) can be used to realistically model the dissipative dynamics of atomic systems and their baths, improving upon traditional methods.

Contribution

The authors develop a GLE-based approach that accurately incorporates bath vibrational properties into Langevin dynamics, enabling realistic simulation of dissipative atomic systems.

Findings

Stable dynamics with proper energy thermalization.

Velocity distribution matches canonical ensemble.

Effective thermostat confirmed by velocity autocorrelation analysis.

Abstract

The Generalised Langevin Equation (GLE) method, as developed in Ref. [Phys. Rev. B 89, 134303 (2014)], is used to calculate the dissipative dynamics of systems described at the atomic level. The GLE scheme goes beyond the commonly used bilinear coupling between the central system and the bath, and permits us to have a realistic description of both the dissipative central system and its surrounding bath. We show how to obtain the vibrational properties of a realistic bath and how to convey such properties into an extended Langevin dynamics by the use of the mapping of the bath vibrational properties onto a set of auxiliary variables. Our calculations for a model of a Lennard-Jones solid show that our GLE scheme provides a stable dynamics, with the dissipative/relaxation processes properly described. The total kinetic energy of the central system always thermalises toward the expected bath temperature, with appropriate fluctuation around the mean value. More importantly, we obtain a velocity distribution for the individual atoms in the central system which follows the expected canonical distribution at the corresponding temperature. This confirms that both our GLE scheme and our mapping procedure onto an extended Langevin dynamics provide the correct thermostat. We also examined the velocity autocorrelation functions and compare our results with more conventional Langevin dynamics.