Best practices for second-generation Car-Parrinello ab initio molecular dynamics with CP2K/Quickstep
Abstract
Second-generation Car--Parrinello \textit{ab initio} molecular dynamics (CP2G AIMD) combines a Born--Oppenheimer-like nuclear equation of motion with a predictor-corrector propagation of the one-particle density matrix and a modified Langevin equation to ensure an accurate sampling of the Boltzmann distribution. In the CP2K implementation, this approach can substantially reduce the number of self-consistent-field iterations required per molecular-dynamics step, but only if the density-matrix propagation, the orbital-transformation corrector, and the modified Langevin friction parameters are tuned consistently. This tutorial gives a practical workflow for setting up CP2G AIMD calculations in CP2K, starting from Born--Oppenheimer pre-equilibration and proceeding through corrector-step-size selection, always-stable predictor-corrector order optimization, final relaxation, and the calibration of the dissipative and stochastic terms used for canonical sampling. The protocol is demonstrated for a 32-molecule liquid-water benchmark and is written for users who already know the basics of CP2K input files but want a reliable route from a conventional AIMD setup to a production-ready CP2G simulation.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.12191,
title = {Best practices for second-generation Car-Parrinello ab initio molecular dynamics with CP2K/Quickstep},
author = {Thomas D. Kühne},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.12191},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
9 pages, 12 figures