Constrained molecular dynamics

In general, constrained molecular dynamics generates biased statistical averages. It can be shown that the correct average for a quantity $a(\xi )$ can be obtained using the formula:

$a(\xi )={\frac {\langle |\mathbf {Z} |^{-1/2}a(\xi ^{*})\rangle _{\xi ^{*}}}{\langle |\mathbf {Z} |^{-1/2}\rangle _{\xi ^{*}}}},$

where $\langle ...\rangle _{\xi ^{*}}$ stands for the statistical average of the quantity enclosed in angular parentheses computed for a constrained ensemble and $Z$ is a mass metric tensor defined as:

$Z_{\alpha ,\beta }={\sum }_{i=1}^{3N}m_{i}^{-1}\nabla _{i}\xi _{\alpha }\cdot \nabla _{i}\xi _{\beta },\,\alpha =1,...,r,\,\beta =1,...,r,$

It can be shown that the free energy gradient can be computed using the equation:

${\Bigl (}{\frac {\partial A}{\partial \xi _{k}}}{\Bigr )}_{\xi ^{*}}={\frac {1}{\langle |Z|^{-1/2}\rangle _{\xi ^{*}}}}\langle |Z|^{-1/2}[\lambda _{k}+{\frac {k_{B}T}{2|Z|}}\sum _{j=1}^{r}(Z^{-1})_{kj}\sum _{i=1}^{3N}m_{i}^{-1}\nabla _{i}\xi _{j}\cdot \nabla _{i}|Z|]\rangle _{\xi ^{*}},$

where $\lambda _{\xi _{k}}$ is the Lagrange multiplier associated with the parameter ${\xi _{k}}$ used in the SHAKE algorithm.

The free-energy difference between states (1) and (2) can be computed by integrating the free-energy gradients over a connecting path:

${\Delta }A_{1\rightarrow 2}=\int _{\xi (1)}^{\xi (2)}{\Bigl (}{\frac {\partial {A}}{\partial \xi }}{\Bigr )}_{\xi ^{*}}\cdot d{\xi }.$

Note that as the free-energy is a state quantity, the choice of path connecting (1) with (2) is irrelevant.

Constrained molecular dynamics is performed using the SHAKE algorithm.. In this algorithm, the Lagrangian for the system ${\mathcal {L}}$ is extended as follows:

${\mathcal {L}}^{*}(\mathbf {q,{\dot {q}}} )={\mathcal {L}}(\mathbf {q,{\dot {q}}} )+\sum _{i=1}^{r}\lambda _{i}\sigma _{i}(q),$

where the summation is over r geometric constraints, ${\mathcal {L}}^{*}$ is the Lagrangian for the extended system, and λ_i is a Lagrange multiplier associated with a geometric constraint σ_i:

$\sigma _{i}(q)=\xi _{i}({q})-\xi _{i}\;$

with ξ_i(q) being a geometric parameter and ξ_i is the value of ξ_i(q) fixed during the simulation.

In the SHAKE algorithm, the Lagrange multipliers λ_i are determined in the iterative procedure:

1. Perform a standard MD step (leap-frog algorithm):

   $v_{i}^{t+{\Delta }t/2}=v_{i}^{t-{\Delta }t/2}+{\frac {a_{i}^{t}}{m_{i}}}{\Delta }t$

   $q_{i}^{t+{\Delta }t}=q_{i}^{t}+v_{i}^{t+{\Delta }t/2}{\Delta }t$

2. Use the new positions q(t+Δt) to compute Lagrange multipliers for all constraints:

   ${\lambda }_{k}={\frac {1}{{\Delta }t^{2}}}{\frac {\sigma _{k}(q^{t+{\Delta }t})}{\sum _{i=1}^{N}m_{i}^{-1}\bigtriangledown _{i}{\sigma }_{k}(q^{t})\bigtriangledown _{i}{\sigma }_{k}(q^{t+{\Delta }t})}}$

3. Update the velocities and positions by adding a contribution due to restoring forces (proportional to λ_k):

   $v_{i}^{t+{\Delta }t/2}=v_{i}^{t-{\Delta }t/2}+\left(a_{i}^{t}-\sum _{k}{\frac {{\lambda }_{k}}{m_{i}}}\bigtriangledown _{i}{\sigma }_{k}(q^{t})\right){\Delta }t$

   $q_{i}^{t+{\Delta }t}=q_{i}^{t}+v_{i}^{t+{\Delta }t/2}{\Delta }t$

4. repeat steps 2-4 until either |σ_i(q)| are smaller than a predefined tolerance (determined by SHAKETOL), or the number of iterations exceeds SHAKEMAXITER.

Anderson thermostat

• For a constrained molecular dynamics run with Andersen thermostat, one has to:

1. Set the standard MD-related tags: IBRION=0, TEBEG, POTIM, and NSW
2. Set MDALGO=1, and choose an appropriate setting for ANDERSEN_PROB
3. Define geometric constraints in the ICONST-file, and set the STATUS parameter for the constrained coordinates to 0
4. When the free-energy gradient is to be computed, set LBLUEOUT=.TRUE.

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