Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2011
The simulation of defect dynamics (e.g., transient enhanced diffusion of boron in the presence of silicon interstitials) is a technologically relevant challenge for computational materials science. The dynamics of defect structures in bulk unfolds as a sequence of thermally induced structural transitions. Identifying and characterizing reaction paths, as well as extracting dynamical quantities (e.g., diffusion constants) is important for modeling the macroscopic properties of real materials. Applying real-time multiresolution analysis (RTMRA) to various dynamical quantities using simple Haar wavelets, we have developed a computationally cheap data compression scheme to handle the massive data sets generated in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations; data storage has been reduced hundredfold with no loss of relevant information. More importantly, the same RTMRA techniques are developed into a sophisticated event detection scheme capable of solving three major challenges to multiscale MD simulations, specifically, (1) identifying meta-stable structures against the background of thermal vibrations, (2) detecting infrequent events, e.g., structural transitions, in the presence of thermal noise, and (3) accurately identifying transition times to further enhance recently emerging MD acceleration techniques.