  Shockwave interactions with material microstructure localizes energy into
hotspots, which act as nucleation sites for complex processes such as phase
transformations and chemical reactions. To date, hotspots have been described
via their temperature fields. Nonreactive, all-atom molecular dynamics
simulations of shock-induced pore collapse in a molecular crystal show that
more energy is localized as potential energy (PE) than can be inferred from the
temperature field and that PE localization persists through thermal diffusion.
The origin of the PE hotspot is traced to large intra-molecular strains,
storing energy in modes readily available for chemical decomposition.
