The phase-field crystal (PFC) method is a promising computational model with atomistic resolution and diffusive time scale. In this work, the Fourier-spectral-method (FSM) scheme was developed for evaluating the PFC free energy of a system subjected homogeneous deformation. This scheme addresses the complication where, in numerical implementation of FSM using discrete Fourier transform (DFT), the discretized data may no longer lie along the directions of the Cartesian basis due to deformation. In this scheme, the real-space coordinate transformation is employed so that the (continuous) Fourier transform is performed on the function of the undeformed coordinates. This transformation allows straightforward DFT implementation because the sampling at the undeformed configuration is unaffected by the deformation. This scheme is also shown to be applicable to both the original PFC model and a “CDFT”-type PFC model containing a two-body correlation function.
Phase-field-crystal models for condensed matter dynamics on atomic length and diffusive time scales: an overview