Tutorials

Metadynamics – Overview for Materials Science – from MIT 3.016

Today I walk you through the general thought process behind the algorithm and its relevance to the field of materials science.

Metadynamics is an algorithm that allows a researcher to estimate the shape of a free energy landscape as a function of one or several Collective Variables (CVs). After expressing the Hamiltonian of a system as a function of CVs, Metadynamics explores the unknown surface via a random walk and solves for energy at every visited location. Using the surface visualization made by a metadynamic algorithm, a researcher can make an estimate of whether a system configuration is stable at a glance.