Event-based relaxation of continuous disordered systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces an efficient computational method called activation-relaxation technique (ART) for finding energy-minimized structures in disordered glassy materials, demonstrated on amorphous silicon and Ni80P20 metallic glass.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel event-based relaxation method (ART) that improves structural optimization in disordered systems.

Findings

Successfully applied ART to amorphous silicon.

Effectively modeled Ni80P20 metallic glass.

Demonstrated efficiency in structural relaxation.

Abstract

A computational approach is presented to obtain energy-minimized structures in glassy materials. This approach, the activation-relaxation technique (ART), achieves its efficiency by focusing on significant changes in the microscopic structure (events). The application of ART is illustrated with two examples: the structure of amorphous silicon, and the structure of Ni80P20, a metallic glass.