A method for the calculation of rate constants from stochastic transition paths

Abstract

We present a novel and efficient method for computation of rate constants in the systems where two metastable states are separated by a high free energy barrier. Our approach is based on the thermodynamic integration applied to the grand canonical ensemble of the stochastic transition paths. As illustrated on a multidimensional model system, the required computational costs depend only weakly on the barrier height, which provides a speedup of orders of magnitude in comparison to direct simulations. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.