The Hydra String Method and its Application to High Dimensional Potential Energy Surfaces Arising from Granular Systems

Dr. Christopher Moakler, UMCP

Host: Dr. Pratyush Tiwary

Abstract: Granular materials are a ubiquitous yet ill-understood class of media. Different approaches and techniques have been developed to understand the many complex behaviors they exhibit, but none have been completely successful. I have instituted a novel means to understand granular materials. This novel method, the Hydra String Method (HSM), is an efficient and autonomous way to trawl the potential energy surfaces (PESs) to enumerate the saddles, minima, and connections between them. I have applied the Hydra String Method to bi-disperse configurations of soft spheres to map out ensembles of pathways between stable packings of the system. These transition pathways are a low-dimensional projection of the larger PES. By understanding these pathways and how they connect to one another may allow for the prediction of the dynamics of a granular system as it moves between stable packings. 

Statistical Physics Seminar