Tersoff potential introduced

In 1988, Tersoff [7] introduced an analytical expression for a many-body potential energy function based on bond order, which was able to accommodate reactive dynamies in a straightforward manner. In this formalism, the interaction energy Eij between a pair of atoms i and j is given by... 

Mainly in the field of materials science various types of potentials have been developed based on the concept of the bond order. " Like for reactive force fields also for the application of these potentials a specification of the atomic positions is sufficient. Although many of these potentials like the Tersoff potential, the Stillinger-Weber potential, the Breimer potential and many others have been introduced already one or two decades ago, they are still frequently used in materials simulations, in particular for semiconductors. For metallic systems the embedded atom method (EAM) and the modified embedded atom method (MEAM) introduced by Baskes and coworkers are widely distributed. 

A related potential form, which was primarily developed to reproduce, structural energetics of silicon, was introduced by Tersoff and was based on ideas discussed by Abell . The binding energy in the AbeH-Tersoff expression is written as a sum of repulsive and attractive two-body interactions, with the attractive contribution being modified by a many-body term. 

In the early 1990s, Brenner and coworkers [163] developed interaction potentials for model explosives that include realistic chemical reaction steps (i.e., endothermic bond rupture and exothermic product formation) and many-body effects. This potential, called the Reactive Empirical Bond Order (REBO) potential, has been used in molecular dynamics simulations by numerous groups to explore atomic-level details of self-sustained reaction waves propagating through a crystal [163-171], The potential is based on ideas first proposed by Abell [172] and implemented for covalent solids by Tersoff [173]. It introduces many-body effects through modification of the pair-additive attractive term by an empirical bond-order function whose value is dependent on the local atomic environment. The form that has been used in the detonation simulations assumes that the total energy of a system of N atoms is ... 

To overcome this limitation we developed a series of potentials in the late 1980 s and early 1990 s that have become known as reactive empirical bond order (REBO) potentials. These potentials are based on the empirical bond order potential form introduced by Tersoff to describe the static properties of silicon but were tailored by us to incorporate a modicum of chemistry. In Sec. 2.1, after introducing the REBO potential form, we describe our simple models for energetic materials that are based on these potentials. In Sec. 2.2, we provide an overview of the approach taken to implement our simulations of shock-induced chemistry and detonations. 

Molecular dynamics studies of diatomic model detonations were first carried out by Karo and Hardy in 1977 [14]. They were soon followed by other groups [15, 16]. These early studies employed predissociative potentials, in which the reactant dimer molecules are metastable and can dissociate exothermically. More realistic models, combining an endothermic dissociation of reactants with an exothermic formation of product molecules, were introduced by White and colleagues at the Naval Research Laboratory and U.S. Naval Academy, first using a LEPS (London-Eyring-Polanyi-Sato) three-body potential for nitric oxide [17], and later a Tersoff-type bond-order potential [18] for a generic AB model, loosely based on NO [19, 20]. 

In our simulation protocol we introduce an energy penalty term in the acceptance criteria. The energy of the system (C-C, C-H and H-H interactions) is calculated using the REBO potential of Brenner [8], which is based on Tersoff s... 

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