Constrained reaction coordinate dynamics for the simulation of rare events

A computationally efficient molecular dynamics method for estimating the rates of rare events that occur by activated processes is described. The system is constrained at “bottleneck” regions on a general many-body reaction coordinate in order to generate a biased configurational distribution. Suitable reweighting of this biased distribution, along with correct momentum distribution sampling, provides a new ensemble, the constrained-reaction-coordinate-dynamics ensemble, with which to study rare events of this type. Applications to chemical reaction rates are made.