Ground states for condensed amorphous systems: Optimizing annealing schemes Original Research Article

Using optimized Simulated Annealing allows finding distinctly lower minima for the potential energy of amorphous systems. A new scheme resulting in an optimal annealing schedule has been found that can be readily applied to the simulation of molecules, clusters and condensed systems with any atomic composition. The scheme remains applicable if, due to the complexity of the system and its interatomic potentials, the configuration space cannot be explored in more detail.