On the Use of Accelerated Molecular Dynamics to Enhance Configurational Sampling in Ab Initio Simulations

We have implemented the accelerated molecular dynamics approach (Hamelberg, D.; Mongan, J.; McCammon, J. A. J. Chem. Phys. 2004, 120 (24), 11919) in the framework of ab initio MD (AIMD). Using three simple examples, we demonstrate that accelerated AIMD (A-AIMD) can be used to accelerate solvent relaxation in AIMD simulations and facilitate the detection of reaction coordinates: (i) We show, for one cyclohexane molecule in the gas phase, that the method can be used to accelerate the rate of the chair-to-chair interconversion by a factor of ～1 × 10(5), while allowing for the reconstruction of the correct canonical distribution of low-energy states; (ii) We then show, for a water box of 64 H(2)O molecules, that A-AIMD can also be used in the condensed phase to accelerate the sampling of water conformations, without affecting the structural properties of the solvent; and (iii) The method is then used to compute the potential of mean force (PMF) for the dissociation of Na-Cl in water, accelerating the convergence by a factor of ～3-4 compared to conventional AIMD simulations.(2) These results suggest that A-AIMD is a useful addition to existing methods for enhanced conformational and phase-space sampling in solution. While the method does not make the use of collective variables superfluous, it also does not require the user to define a set of collective variables that can capture all the low-energy minima on the potential energy surface. This property may prove very useful when dealing with highly complex multidimensional systems that require a quantum mechanical treatment.