In this paper, we report a generalized form for the range parameter governing the pair interaction between soft ellipsoidal particles. For nonequivalent uniaxial particles, we extend the Berne-Pechukas Gaussian overlap formalism to obtain an explicit expression for this range parameter. We confirm that this result is identical to that given by an approach that is not widely recognized, based on an approximation to the Perram-Wertheim hard-ellipsoid contact function. We further illustrate the power of the latter route by using it to write down the range parameter for the interaction between two nonequivalent biaxial particles. An explicit interaction potential for nonequivalent uniaxial particles is obtained by importing the uniaxial range parameter result into the standard Gay-Berne form. A parametrization of this potential is investigated for a rod-disk interaction. ͓S1063-651X͑96͒05506-7͔

Molecular dynamics integrators are presented for translational and rotational motion of rigid molecules in microcanonical, canonical, and isothermal-isobaric ensembles. The integrators are all time reversible and are also, in some approaches, symplectic for the microcanonical ensembles. They are developed utilizing the quaternion representation on the basis of the Trotter factorization scheme using a Hamiltonian formalism. The structure is similar to that of the velocity Verlet algorithm. Comparison is made with standard integrators in terms of stability and it is found that a larger time step is stable with the new integrators. The canonical and isothermal-isobaric molecular dynamics simulations are defined by using a chain thermostat approach according to generalized Nosé-Hoover and Andersen methods.

We propose a scaling of an intrinsic molecular chirality index calculated from atomic positions. Its application to the design of chiral molecules through a consideration of atomic or group chiral indices is discussed for a range of molecules from small molecules to liquid crystal molecules. It is found to indicate the trend in change of chirality of a molecule caused by an atom or group substitution. Comparison is made between the method of scaling and an analytic calculation of the index for an orthogonal tetrahedron. We investigate the effect of substitution of atoms and groups in real liquid crystal molecules by application of the generalized chiral index.