-> The comments of the referee suggest that the current manuscript on its
-> own does not meet our acceptance criteria. We feel that it will be in
-> your interest to combine your earlier submission BA11443 with the
-> current manuscript. We look forward to receiving such a modified
-> manuscript.
-
-BA11443 (Ref. 60) is a self contained and comprehensive manuscript,
-which already now has an appreciable length. Although dealing with the
-same material the present manuscript uses a different, continuative
-approach.
-
-While manuscript BA11443 constitutes a study on defects in
-carbon-implanted silicon exclusively investigated by first-principles
-methods, the present study picks up the limitation of the employed
-classical potential as revealed already in Ref. 42, investigates this
-limitation in more detail and proposes an approach to work around it
-enabling the application to classical potential molecular dynamics
-simulations. Although conclusions on the SiC precipitation in Si are
-already derived in manuscript BA11443, the present study is considered
-an interesting and self contained continuation since it allows for the
-description of larger systems and time scales than accessible by ab
-inito methods. Furthermore, a majority of the results of the classical
-potential as well as the ab initio results on defect structures are
-not presented in either of the two preceding publications.
-
-We would greatly appreciate if you could reconsider your decission and
-we look forward to receiving further comments. It would also be nice
-to know how the processing of manuscript BA11443 is now influenced by
-the present decission.
-
-Please find attached a reply to the comments of the referee, which we
-hope will clarify all your and the referee's concerns enabling a
-separated publication in the Physical Review B.
-
+Thank you very much for informing us about the status of our
+manuscript.
+
+The referee
+
+ i) requests a clarification of the relation of the present
+ manuscript to a previous submission of ours (BA11443)
+ ii) has reservations about the methodology used in the present work
+iii) suggests to possibly combine some account of the present
+ work with the previous submission BA11443.
+
+What concerns (ii), the classical potential molecular dynamics used in
+the present work certainly has limitations. Precisely in order to
+quantify these limitations, a comparison is made with ab initio
+calculations as well as earlier first-principles work (BA11443).
+Despite the shortcomings of classical potential simulations, they
+nevertheless provide valuable insight in the physical mechanism of
+silicon carbide precipitation on length and time scales which are not
+accessible to more accurate ab initio techniques. A detailed response
+to the referee's concerns is given below.
+
+Concerning (i) and (iii), the ab initio work BA11443 is a
+self-contained and comprehensive manuscript, which already now has an
+appreciable length. It is a first-principles study on defects in
+carbon-implanted silicon. In contrast, the present study mainly
+applies classical potentials to model the SiC precipitation in Si on
+large time and length scales. While the material is the same, the
+methodologies applied and the questions addressed in the present work
+and in BA11443 largely differ. For this reason, and because both
+manuscripts already contain a substantial amount of information, we
+believe it is not in the interest of the readers to combine the two
+manuscripts. Perhaps it would be good idea to make BA11443 available
+to the referee of the present work?
+
+Please find below a reply to the comments of the referee, which we
+hope will satisfactorily answer his concerns on the suitability of our
+work for publication in the Physical Review B.