TY  - JOUR
SP  - 4428 
VL  - 120
N1  - © 2004 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. The following article appeared in Ford, IJ; Harris, SA; (2004) Molecular cluster decay viewed as escape from a potential of mean force. Journal of Chemical Physics , 120 (9) 4428 - 4440. and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.1644533.
IS  - 9
SN  - 0021-9606
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.1644533
A1  - Ford, IJ
A1  - Harris, SA
JF  - Journal of Chemical Physics
EP  -  4440
AV  - public
Y1  - 2004/03/01/
TI  - Molecular cluster decay viewed as escape from a potential of mean force
PB  - AMER INST PHYSICS
ID  - discovery123680
N2  - We show that evaporation from a quasistable molecular cluster may be treated as a kinetic problem involving the stochastically driven escape of a molecule from a potential of mean force. We derive expressions for the decay rate, and a relationship between the depth of the potential and the change in system free energy upon loss of a molecule from the cluster. This establishes a connection between kinetic and thermodynamic treatments of evaporation, but also reveals differences in the prefactor in the rate expression. We perform constant energy molecular dynamics simulations of cluster dynamics to calculate potentials of mean force, friction coefficients and effective temperatures for use in the kinetic analysis, and to compare the results with the directly observed escape rates. We also use the simulations to estimate the escape rates by a probabilistic analysis. It is much more efficient to calculate the decay rate by the methods we have developed than it is to monitor escape directly, making these approaches potentially useful for the assessment of molecular cluster stability. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.
KW  - Monte-Carlo-simulation
KW  -  homogeneous nucleation rate
KW  -  vapor-liquid nucleation
KW  -  physical clusters
KW  -  equilibrium
KW  -  definition
KW  -  transition
KW  -  gases
KW  -  water
ER  -