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Features of PSCF programs are listed below, grouped so as to indicate the computational methods and programs to which they apply:
Features for both SCFT and PS-FTS (all programs):
- Ability to treat mixtures containing any number of block polymer, homopolymer, and solvent molecular species
 
- Ability to treat acyclic branched block polymers, as well as linear block polymers
 
- Ability to use canonical, grand-canonical or mixed statistical ensembles
 
- Thorough user and developer documentation provided via an integrated web manual
 
- Well documented source code written in object-oriented C++
 
- Example input files for many types of calculation
 
- Python tools for data analysis and file processing
 
Features for SCFT (all programs):
- Efficient Anderson-mixing SCFT iteration algorithms
 
- Efficient "parameter sweeps": SCFT calculations for a sequence of states along a path in parameter space, with continuation of solutions
 
All features listed below are specific to the pscf_pc and pscf_pg programs. Both of these programs are designed for systems with periodic boundary conditions and can perform either SCFT or PS-FTS calculations. In SCFT, the periodic computational unit cell is usually chosen so as to represent a single crystallographic unit cell, whereas in FTS it may represent a larger region.
Features for SCFT or PS-FTS on periodic systems (pscf_pc and pscf_pg):
- Choice of continuous thread or discrete bead-spring models of polymer chains
 
- High accuracy pseudo-spectral solution of the modified diffusion equation for the continuous thread model.
 
- Periodic unit cells with 1, 2 or 3 dimensional periodicity
 
- Unit cells with all possible 2D and 3D Bravais lattice systems (i.e., cubic, orthorhombic, monoclinic, etc.)
 
- A companion matlab package Polymer Visual for visualization of structures with periodic boundary conditions
 
Features for SCFT on periodic systems (pscf_pc and pscf_pg):
- Efficient algorithms to find optimal unit cell parameters in SCFT
 
- Imposition of any user-selected space-group symmetry on SCFT solutions
 
- Built-in database of symmetry operations for all 230 3D space groups and 17 2D plane groups.
 
- Inhomogeneous density constraint (a "mask")
 
- External fields
 
- Thin polymer films (implemented using a mask and external fields)
 
Features for PS-FTS with periodic boundary conditions (pscf_pc and pscf_pg):
- Brownian dynamics (BD) and Monte Carlo (MC) sampling algorithms
 
- BD algorithms: Leimkuhler-Matthews and predictor-corrector step algorithms
 
- MC algorithms: real-space and "smart"/force-bias MC moves
 
- Efficient algorithms for adjusting the pressure field so as to find a partial saddle-point (i.e., to impose incompressibility)
 
- Tools for calculating free energy differences by thermodynamic integration, including the Einstein-crystal method
 
- Parameter "ramps" in which one or more parameters change continuously during a simulation
 
- Analysis tools to compute quantities of interest, including the structure factor, order parameters used to identify phase transitions, and derivatives of the Hamiltonian needed for thermodynamic integration calculations
 
- Analysis tools can applied either during a simulation or by postprocessing of field trajectory files that are written during an earlier simulation
 
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