On the Identification of Solid-Like Clusters in a Crystallizing Yukawa System

Abstract

The crystallization of systems with soft interaction potentials is analyzed for a Yukawa system as an example. The crystallization pathway in the plane of rotational invariants q₄ and q₆ is studied in detail. The recently proposed invariants bcc₁ and bcc₂, calculated using 12 nearest neighbors, are applied for the first time to study the crystallization. It is shown that the combination of the rotational invariant technique and the method of Voronoi polyhedra allows us to identify quite simply all types of solid-like clusters formed during the solidification of the system, including bcc-like clusters, which are hardly identified by conventional methods.