Locally adaptive method to define coordination shell

An algorithm is presented to define a particle's coordination shell for any collection of particles. It requires only the particles' positions and no pre-existing knowledge or parameters beyond those already in the force field. A particle's shell is taken to be all particles that are not blocked by any other particle and not further away than a blocked particle. Because blocking is based on two distances and an angle for triplets of particles, it is called the relative angular distance (RAD) algorithm. RAD is applied to Lennard-Jones particles in molecular dynamics simulations of crystalline, liquid, and gaseous phases at various temperatures and densities. RAD coordination shells agree well with those from a cut-off in the radial distribution function for the crystals and liquids and are slightly higher for the gas. (C) 2016 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).