Citing LAMMPS

The following CPC paper is the canonical reference to use for citing LAMMPS. It gives an overview of the code including its parallel algorithms, design features, performance, and brief highlights of many of its materials modeling capabilities. If you wish, you can also mention the URL of the LAMMPS website in your paper.

LAMMPS - a flexible simulation tool for particle-based materials modeling at the atomic, meso, and continuum scales, A. P. Thompson, H. M. Aktulga, R. Berger, D. S. Bolintineanu, W. M. Brown, P. S. Crozier, P. J. in ’t Veld, A. Kohlmeyer, S. G. Moore, T. D. Nguyen, R. Shan, M. J. Stevens, J. Tranchida, C. Trott, S. J. Plimpton, Comp. Phys. Comm. 271 (2022) 108171, doi:10.1016/j.cpc.2021.108171.

BibTeX

@Article{LAMMPS,
  author = "A. P. Thompson and H. M. Aktulga and R. Berger and
     D. S. Bolintineanu and W. M. Brown and P. S. Crozier and
     P. J. in 't Veld and A. Kohlmeyer and S. G. Moore and T. D. Nguyen and
     R. Shan and M. J. Stevens and J. Tranchida and C. Trott and S. J. Plimpton",
  title = "{LAMMPS} - a flexible simulation tool for
     particle-based materials modeling at the
     atomic, meso, and continuum scales",
  journal = "Comp. Phys. Comm.",
  volume =  "271",
  pages =   "108171",
  year =    "2022",
  doi = "10.1016/j.cpc.2021.108171"
}

Original reference

This earlier JCP paper was the original citation for LAMMPS. You can cite it if you want to refer to the parallel spatial-decomposition strategy LAMMPS still uses:

Fast Parallel Algorithms for Short-Range Molecular Dynamics, S. Plimpton, J. Comp. Phys. 117, 1-19 (1995), abstract.

Citing specific features

Many capabilities within LAMMPS were implemented by people who wrote papers about their work. If you use their feature in your simulations and write your own paper, we highly recommend you cite their work specifically.

When you run LAMMPS and use a citeable feature, a message is printed to the screen and logfile. A log.cite file is also output, which gives a BibTeX form of the corresponding citation.