https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2019-11915-7
Regular Article
Distinguishing noisy crystalline structures using bond orientational order parameters
1
Institut für Materialphysik im Weltraum, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt, 51170, Köln, Germany
2
Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, 50937, Köln, Germany
* e-mail: philip.born@dlr.de
Received:
29
May
2019
Accepted:
3
November
2019
Published online:
27
November
2019
The bond orientational order parameters originally introduced by Steinhardt et al. (Phys. Rev. B 28, 784 (1983)) are a common tool for local structure characterization in soft matter studies. Recently, Mickel et al. (J. Chem. Phys. 138, 044501 (2013)) highlighted problems of the bond orientational order parameters due to the ambiguity of the underlying neighbourhood definition. Here we show the difficulties to distinguish common structures like FCC- and BCC-based structures with the suggested neighbourhood definitions when noise is introduced. We propose a simple improvement to the neighbourhood definition that results in robust and continuous bond orientational order parameters with which we can accurately distinguish crystal structures even when noise is present.
Key words: Soft Matter: Self-organisation and Supramolecular Assemblies
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature, 2019
