Abstract
Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have become a tool of immense use and popularity for simulating a variety of systems. With the advent of massively parallel computer resources, one now routinely sees applications of MD to systems as large as hundreds of thousands to even several million atoms, which is almost the size of most nanomaterials. However, it is not yet possible to reach laboratory timescales of milliseconds and beyond with MD simulations. Due to the essentially sequential nature of time, parallel computers have been of limited use in solving this so-called timescale problem. Instead, over the years a large range of statistical mechanics based enhanced sampling approaches have been proposed for accelerating molecular dynamics, and accessing timescales that are well beyond the reach of the fastest computers. In this review we provide an overview of these approaches, including the underlying theory, typical applications, and publicly available software resources to implement them.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Pablo Piaggi for a careful reading of the manuscript. PT would like to acknowledge numerous discussions and arguments on the subject over the years with Bruce Berne, Michele Parrinello, and Art Voter.
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Tiwary, P., van de Walle, A. (2016). A Review of Enhanced Sampling Approaches for Accelerated Molecular Dynamics. In: Weinberger, C., Tucker, G. (eds) Multiscale Materials Modeling for Nanomechanics. Springer Series in Materials Science, vol 245. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33480-6_6
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