Structural relaxation in Morse clusters: Energy landscapes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the energy landscape of 13-atom Morse clusters changes with potential range, affecting relaxation dynamics and landscape complexity, providing insights into structural relaxation processes.

Contribution

It offers a detailed analysis of potential energy landscapes for Morse clusters, highlighting how landscape features evolve with potential range and influence relaxation behavior.

Findings

Landscape becomes rougher with shorter potential range

Relaxation paths grow more complex as potential range decreases

Global landscape features are linked to relaxation dynamics

Abstract

We perform a comprehensive survey of the potential energy landscapes of 13-atom Morse clusters, and describe how they can be characterized and visualized. Our aim is to detail how the global features of the funnel-like surface change with the range of the potential, and to relate these changes to the dynamics of structural relaxation. We find that the landscape becomes rougher and less steep as the range of the potential decreases, and that relaxation paths to the global minimum become more complicated.