English

Viscosity in molecular dynamics with periodic boundary conditions

Statistical Mechanics 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

We report a study of viscosity by the method of Helfand moment in systems with periodic boundary conditions. We propose a new definition of Helfand moment which takes into account the minimum image convention used in molecular dynamics with periodic boundary conditions. Our Helfand-moment method is equivalent to the method based on the Green-Kubo formula and is not affected by ambiguities due to the periodic boundary conditions. Moreover, in hard-ball systems, our method is equivalent to the one developed by B. J. Alder, D. M. Gass, and T. E. Wainwright [{\it J. Chem. Phys.} {\bf 53}, 3813 (1970)]. We apply and verify our method in a fluid composed of N2N\geq 2 hard disks in elastic collisions. We show that the viscosity coefficients already take values in good agreement with Enskog's theory for N=2 hard disks in a hexagonal geometry.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0309428,
  title  = {Viscosity in molecular dynamics with periodic boundary conditions},
  author = {S. Viscardy and P. Gaspard},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0309428},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

30 pages, 32 figures, accepted in August 2003 (Phys.Rev. E)