Metadynamics (MTD; also abbreviated as METAD or MetaD) is a computer simulation method in computational physics, chemistry and biology. It is used to estimate the free energy and other state functions of a system, where ergodicity is hindered by the form of the system's energy landscape. It was first suggested by Alessandro Laio and Michele Parrinello in 2002[1] and is usually applied within molecular dynamics simulations. MTD closely resembles a number of newer methods such as adaptively biased molecular dynamics,[2] adaptive reaction coordinate forces[3] and local elevation umbrella sampling.[4] More recently, both the original and well-tempered metadynamics[5] were derived in the context of importance sampling and shown to be a special case of the adaptive biasing potential setting.[6] MTD is related to the Wang–Landau sampling.[7]
^Hansen, H.S.; Hünenberger, P.H. (2010). "Using the local elevation method to construct optimized umbrella sampling potentials: Calculation of the relative free energies and interconversion barriers of glucopyranose ring conformers in water". J. Comput. Chem. 31 (1): 1–23. doi:10.1002/jcc.21253. PMID19412904. S2CID7367058.
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^Christoph Junghans, Danny Perez, and Thomas Vogel. "Molecular Dynamics in the Multicanonical Ensemble: Equivalence of Wang–Landau Sampling, Statistical Temperature Molecular Dynamics, and Metadynamics." Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation 10.5 (2014): 1843-1847. doi:10.1021/ct500077d