Dr. László Pusztai, co-developer of the Reverse Monte Carlo method widely used in many branches of physics and math, will be visiting us next thursday. He will be giving a seminar in room H, Physics division building, Thursday 18 July at 15 pm, entitled:

REVERSE MONTE CARLO BASED ANALYSES OF THE
STRUCTURE OF LIQUIDS WITH TETRAHEDRAL MOLECULES

László Pusztai

Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, H-1121

Budapest, Konkoly Thege út 29-33., Hungary

Precise information on the microscopic structure of liquids is of primary importance.
Unfortunately, standard methods of crystallography cannot be applied in here, due to the
lack of translational symmetry in liquids.
In this talk, I will try to provide a short introduction on some of the experimental
methods available for studying disordered structures, neutron and X-ray diffraction.
Computational methods that can enhance our understanding of the structure of liquids
will also be mentioned. Special emphasis will be placed on Reverse Monte Carlo (RMC)
modeling.
Next, a well-known example, the structure of carbon-tetrachloride (CCl4) will be
discussed in some detail, mentioning available diffraction data and computer simulation
results, as well as the (rather strange) history of interpretations of these data. Based on the
knowledge gained during the (ca. 15 year) long investigation of liquid CCl4, orientational
correlations in related liquids (such as, e.g., chloroform and methylene chloride) have also
been revealed.