Tromsø, Norway, June 23-26, 2025
The UMD/Magmatomix School series offers a deep dive into the atomistic modeling of natural silicate liquids, fluids, and gases, along with their equilibria with minerals. The next event will take place in Tromsø, Norway, on June 23-26, following the midnight sun of 2025.
This school aims to provide foundational knowledge in the application of first-principles (FP) molecular dynamics (MD) to study the static, dynamic, thermodynamic, and transport properties of multicomponent silicate liquids. The program will cover various ensembles, statistical analysis of MD simulations, and their applications in geophysics. As in previous years, the lecture series will be followed by hands-on FP and MD tutorials. Participants will be introduced to the UMD package (Caracas et al., 2021), a specialized tool for the intricate analysis of atomistic simulations of fluids. We will demonstrate how to use the UMD package to obtain structural, transport, and thermodynamic properties of various dry, wet, and carbonated silicate melts.
Through the UMD package, participants will learn how to:
* Compute the self-correlation of the stress tensor to estimate the viscosity of the fluid
* Extract relevant results from ab initio molecular dynamics simulations and construct UMD (“Universal Molecular Dynamics”) files
* Apply individual UMD components to analyze these results
* Calculate pair distribution functions, bond lengths, the size of the coordination sphere, and average coordination numbers
* Build the connectivity matrix to obtain chemical speciation, including population analysis, polymerization of the melt, and lifetimes of chemical species
* Calculate mean-square displacements and extract diffusion coefficients
* Analyze the self-correlation of atomic velocities to derive the vibrational spectrum of the fluid and diffusion coefficients
The school is limited to approximately 30 students, on a first-come, first-served basis. There are no fees to attend the school; however, there is a cost for the optional social event.
Please submit your registration for the UMD/Magmatomix school via the following link:
The school is made possible through financial contributions from the HIDDEN project, funded by the Norges Forskingsrådet (NFR, project no. 325567), and the European Geosciences Union. We would like to acknowledge the local support from Radovan Bast (University of Tromsø) and Trine Sannesmoen (University of Oslo).