Simulated annealing of silicon atom clusters in Langevin.

We have performed simulated annealing of silicon clusters with a Langevin molecular dynamics approach. The silicon atoms interact through 2 and 3-body potentials and are connected to a heat bath that provides a stochastic force and a viscous friction. The simulated annealing is substantially better than any steepest descent method, and produces globally minimum energy states of the clusters that are insensitive to the initial cluster configuration or the details of the cooling schedule. Systematics of the simulated annealing process are discussed.