Some aspects of dynamic chaos in small Lennard-Jones clusters

For the purpose of studying stochastic phenomena in the clusters due to an instability of their trajectories in phase space, an evolution of ensembles of the clusters with the representative points initially located in small regions of phase space is investigated using the molecular dynamics method. A path of a cloud of the representative points through the subspace of phase space available for the clusters, and cloud growth in size and in volume are considered. Specific results are presented for Ar₄. A “cold” cluster (subjected to neither an isomerization nor an evaporation) is examined in details. A brief comparison with a “hot” cluster (both the phenomena are available) is given.