I have no strong opinions on this, but others, notably Adrian, do. I want to make sure I have the same understanding of these words as others.
The following definitions are what I think others mean and are intended as a starting point for better definitions. Do you agree with them? If not, what should they be? Or what words would you give for these definitions? I tried to avoid deep stat-mech/thermo terminology.
Relaxed (commonly called 'equilibrated'):
In practical terms, the system has entered a stationary phase with respect to bulk properties that are expected to be in stationary phase per the simulation setup but that are not being held constant. These will typically include one or more of total energy, pressure, volume, density, and temperature. With respect to physics, this means that the simulated system has probably begun to sample configurations of mass and energy (momentum) in proportions consistent with the simulated ensemble (not necessarily the reality being modeled).
Converged:
For some property, not necessarily a bulk property, a stationary phase, which might unimodal or multimodal, has been sampled enough that meaningful statistical descriptions might be made about it. The system has sampled very well, in ensemble-appropriate proportions, a persistent or metastable subset of the phase space.
Equilibrated:
The entire system has sampled all available configurations sufficiently that meaningful statistics can be made about any system property. That is, the system has thoroughly sampled an ensemble-appropriate portion of the phase space, in ensemble-appropriate proportions, multiple times.
Most simulations of any significant complexity can only hope to attain 'converged' with respect to whatever properties are being tracked. It is very difficult to know for certain that other behaviors would not be observed were the simulation to be run longer. I think if there were an easy way to tell, then we would not very often need to do simulations. This problem also impacts our ability to know if 'relaxed' is truly 'relaxed', etc.
:-) Lachele
Dr. B. Lachele Foley (she/her/hers)
Associate Research Scientist
Complex Carbohydrate Research Center
The University of Georgia
Athens, GA USA
lfoley.uga.edu
http://glycam.org
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Received on Tue Mar 02 2021 - 18:00:02 PST
