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### fix bond/break command

Syntax:

    fix ID group-ID bond/break Nevery bondtype Rmax keyword values ...

- ID, group-ID are documented in fix command
- bond/break = style name of this fix command
- Nevery = attempt bond breaking every this many steps
- bondtype = type of bonds to break
- Rmax = bond longer than Rmax can break (distance units)
- zero or more keyword/value pairs may be appended to args
- keyword = prob

        prob values = fraction seed
          fraction = break a bond with this probability if otherwise eligible
          seed = random number seed (positive integer)

Examples:

    fix 5 all bond/break 10 2 1.2
    fix 5 polymer bond/break 1 1 2.0 prob 0.5 49829

Description:

Break bonds between pairs of atoms as a simulation runs according to specified criteria. This can be used to model the dissolution of a polymer network due to stretching of the simulation box or other deformations. In this context, a bond means an interaction between a pair of atoms computed by the bond_style command. Once the bond is broken it will be permanently deleted. This is different than a pairwise bond-order potential such as Tersoff or AIREBO which infers bonds and many-body interactions based on the current geometry of a small cluster of atoms and effectively creates and destroys bonds from timestep to timestep as atoms move.

A check for possible bond breakage is performed every Nevery timesteps. If two bonded atoms I,J are further than a distance Rmax of each other, if the bond is of type bondtype, and if both I and J are in the specified fix group, then I,J is labeled as a "possible" bond to break.

If several bonds involving an atom are stretched, it may have multiple possible bonds to break. Every atom checks its list of possible bonds to break and labels the longest such bond as its "sole" bond to break. After this is done, if atom I is bonded to atom J in its sole bond, and atom J is bonded to atom I in its sole bond, then the I,J bond is "eligible" to be broken.

Note that these rules mean an atom will only be part of at most one broken bond on a given timestep. It also means that if atom I chooses atom J as its sole partner, but atom J chooses atom K is its sole partner (due to Rjk > Rij), then this means atom I will not be part of a broken bond on this timestep, even if it has other possible bond partners.

The prob keyword can effect whether an eligible bond is actually broken. The fraction setting must be a value between 0.0 and 1.0. A uniform random number between 0.0 and 1.0 is generated and the eligible bond is only broken if the random number < fraction.

When a bond is broken, data structures within LAMMPS that store bond topology are updated to reflect the breakage. This can also affect subsequent computation of pairwise interactions involving the atoms in the bond. See the Restriction section below for additional information.

Computationally, each timestep this fix operates, it loops over bond lists and computes distances between pairs of bonded atoms in the list. It also communicates between neighboring processors to coordinate which bonds are broken. Thus it will increase the cost of a timestep. Thus you should be cautious about invoking this fix too frequently.

You can dump out snapshots of the current bond topology via the dump local command.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Breaking a bond typically alters the energy of a system. You should be careful not to choose bond breaking criteria that induce a dramatic change in energy. For example, if you define a very stiff harmonic bond and break it when 2 atoms are separated by a distance far from the equilibribum bond length, then the 2 atoms will be dramatically released when the bond is broken. More generally, you may need to thermostat your system to compensate for energy changes resulting from broken bonds.

Restart, fix_modify, output, run start/stop, minimize info:

No information about this fix is written to binary restart files. None of the fix_modify options are relevant to this fix.

This fix computes two statistics which it stores in a global vector of length 2, which can be accessed by various output commands. The vector values calculated by this fix are "intensive".

These are the 2 quantities:

- (1) # of bonds broken on the most recent breakage timestep
- (2) cummulative # of bonds broken

No parameter of this fix can be used with the start/stop keywords of the run command. This fix is not invoked during energy minimization.

Restrictions:

This fix is part of the MC package. It is only enabled if LAMMPS was built with that package. See the Making LAMMPS section for more info.

Currently, there are 2 restrictions for using this fix. We may relax these in the future if there are new models that would be enabled by it.

When a bond is broken, you might wish to turn off angle and dihedral interactions that include that bond. However, LAMMPS does not check for these angles and dihedrals, even if your simulation defines an angle_style or dihedral_style.

This fix requires that the pairwise weightings defined by the special_bonds command be *,1,1 for 1-3 and 1-4 neighbors within the bond topology (the 1-2 setting is not restricted). This means that the pairwise interaction of I with J's other bond partners is unaffected by the breaking of the bond.

Related commands:

fix bond/create, fix bond/swap, dump local, special_bonds

Default:

The option defaults are prob = 1.0.