Creating conditions of anomalous self-diffusion in a liquid with molecular dynamics

Abstract

We propose a computational method to simulate anomalous self-diffusion in a simple liquid. The method is based on a molecular dynamics simulation on which we impose the following two conditions: firstly, the inter-particle interaction is described by a soft-core potential and secondly, the system is forced out of equilibrium. The latter can be achieved by subjecting the system to changes in the length scale at intermittent times. In many respects, our simulation system bears resemblance to slowly driven sandpile models displaying self-organised criticality. We find non-Gaussian single time step displacement distributions during the out-of-equilibrium time periods of the simulation.Comment: Extended version: 12 pages, 9 figure