CCL: an algorithm for the efficient comparison of clusters

The systematic comparison of the atomic structure of solids and clusters has become an important task in crystallography, chemistry, physics and materials science, in particular in the context of structure prediction and structure determination of nanomaterials. In this work, an efficient and robust algorithm for the comparison of cluster structures is presented, which is based on the mapping of the point patterns of the two clusters onto each other. This algorithm has been implemented as the module CCL in the structure visualization and analysis program KPLOT.