Most electron beam physics is considered in the context of a vacuum, but there are applications to long-range electron beam transmission in air. As particle acceleration sources become more compact, we may have the chance to take particle beams out to the real world. The example provided in the paper describes that of x-ray backscatter detectors, where significantly stronger signals could be achieved by scanning objects with electron beams. This paper forms the basis for a potential new mode of particle-beam research, and it is important to ensure the reproducibility of this work for groups who wish to explore the applications of this new technology.
The method is trained on the data that were available, but it is meant to be re-trainable as soon as new data are published. It would be great to be really sure that even someone else will be able to do it. In case we receive any feedback, we would be really happy to improve our Github repository so as to make the reproduction easier!
DFT calculations are in principle reproducible between different codes, but differences can arise due to poor choice of convergence tolerances, inappropriate use of pseudopotentials and other numerical considerations. An independent validation of the key quantities needed to compute electrical conductivity would be valuable. In this case we have published our input files for calculating the four quantities needed to parametrise the transport simulations from which we compute the electrical conductivity. These are specifically electronic band structure, phonon dispersions, electron-phonon coupling constants and third derivatives of the force constants. Each in turn in more sensitive to convergence tolerances than the last, and it is the final quantity on which the conclusions of the paper critically depend. Reference output data is provided for comparison at the data URL below. We note that the pristine CNT results (dark red line) in figure 3 are an independent reproduction of earlier work and so we are confident the Boltzmann transport simulations are reproducible. The calculated inputs to these from DFT (in the case of Be encapsulation) have not been independently reproduced to our knowledge.
The negative surface enthalpies in figure 5 are surprising. At least one group has attempted to reproduce these using a different code and obtained positive enthalpies. This was attributed to the inability of that code to independently relax the three simulation cell vectors resulting in an unphysical water density. This demonstrates how sensitive these results can be to the particular implementation of simulation algorithms in different codes. Similarly the force field used is now very popular. Its functional form and full set of parameters can be found in the literature. However differences in how different simulation codes implement truncation, electrostatics etc can lead to significant difference in results such as these. It would be a valuable exercise to establish if exactly the same force field as that used here can be reproduced from only its specification in the literature. The interfacial energies of interest should be reproducible with simulations on modest numbers of processors (a few dozen) with run times for each being 1-2 days. Each surface is an independent calculation and so these can be run concurrently during the ReproHack.
The results of this paper have been used in multiple subsequent studies as a benchmark against which other methods of performing the same calculation have been tested. Other groups have challenged the results as suffering from finite size effects, in particular the calculations on mixtures of cubic and hexagonal ice. Should there be time during in the event, participants could check this by performing calculations on larger unit cells. Each individual calculation should converge adequately within 96 hours making it amenable to a HPC ReproHack. Given modern HPC hardware many such calculations could be run concurrently on a single HPC node.
If all went right, the analysis should be fully reproducible without the need to make any adjustments. The paper aims to find optimal locations for new parkruns, but we were not 100% sure how 'optimal' should be defined. We provide a few examples, but the code was meant to be flexible enough to allow potential decision makers to specify their own, alternative objectives. The spatial data set is also quite interesting and fun to play around with. Cave: The full analysis takes a while to run (~30+ min) and might require >= 8gb ram.
