Determination of seed number

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1

Hi All,

I have a very simple question which has been confusing me for a while. I am assigning velocities to my Argon atom at 300 Kelvin and I want to chose Vx, Vy, Vz speed components fro Gaussian distribution. Here is my code:

velocity all create 300.0 random # seed dist gaussian

My question is that can I put any number instead of random # seed. For example: can I put 7 or 780 or 5365487495650 and will they all chose velocities from Gaussian Distribution. If not, is there any way to create random seed numbers which will sample the speed components from Gaussian distribution?

Thanks,
Rose

2

a seed is just a number used to initialize the (pseudo)random number generator.

have a look here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generation#Computational_methods

so yes, in principle any number will guarantee, in this case, a set of values compatible with a gaussian distribution.

if you run your input script more than once using the same seed (say, 70), then each atom will have same initial velocity components across different runs.

hope this helps,

luca