Elisabeth wrote:
Hello,

Thank you. I am looking at potential energies to calculate vaporization heat. I wanted to know how the fact that berendsen does not lead to correct ensemble is affecting total potential energy of the system. I have an unclear image of "correct ensemble". Does this mean whatever output I am getting from my runs are unreliable?


The Berendsen coupling algorithms produce very narrow distributions of temperature and pressure. These do not correspond to the correct distribution of a true statistical mechanical ensemble; plot a histogram and you'll find that the results are shockingly different between Berendsen and, say, Nose-Hoover for T. Therefore, the ensemble you're using to measure your properties is not NPT (or NVT, in the case of thermostat only), it's something undefined and likely not real. Applying better thermostats and barostats that have been shown to produce the correct distributions is more rigorously correct.

The effects are usually not terribly noticeable unless you go looking for them. You'll find that the Berendsen algorithms quite faithfully give you the target T and P that you desire (which does make them very good for initial equilibration) and so you naturally assume that everything is fine. While that's all well and good in one sense, the fluctuations of T (and thus velocities, and thus kinetic energy) are wrong. If KE does not fluctuate properly, then neither does PE (since you're then affecting energy flow between PE and KE, while total energy stays fixed, in theory).

The larger point is that if you claim to apply an NVT (or NPT) ensemble using Berendsen coupling, you're not correct, strictly speaking.

-Justin

Appreciate any clarification.

Thank you,
Best,

On 15 August 2011 19:34, Mark Abraham <mark.abra...@anu.edu.au <mailto:mark.abra...@anu.edu.au>> wrote:

    On 16/08/2011 7:05 AM, Elisabeth wrote:
    Dear all,

    I noticed that applying Parrinello-Rahman (PR) pressure coupling
    even after equilibration with berendsen does not lead to target
    value for pressure when

    ;        Bonds
    constraints             = none

    is used.

    The use of constraints and the integration step size is linked.
    Roughly speaking, no constraints should accompany a 0.5 fs time
    step, H-bond constraints with 1fs and all constraints with 2fs.
    Haphazard changes to .mdp files have all kinds of these "gotchas".


    I tried Berendsen for to get fixed pressure ( 50 bar) but in the
    next run PR even for long time is giving 52 bar. This is the case
    for other target pressures too.

    You need to be sure to collect statistics only after equilibration,
    and consider whether the observed variation is consistent with
    convergence to a given value.



    So this made me select Berenden which is giving target pressure
    values but my concern is whether my results are reliable because
    BR does not give the exact ensemble as PR. I read somewhere on the
    list that fluctuation properties can not be calculated when BR is
    used.  What does "fluctuation property" mean?

    BR does not produce the correct ensemble. I forget the details about
    why, but there are references in the T-coupling section of the
    manual you should consider.


    Does this mean that any property calculated form fluctuations of
    some other quantity can not be obtained>? like heat capacity which
    is defined based on enthalpy fluctuations?

    IIRC, yes.


    I am interested in potential energy terms (g_energy bonded/non
boned terms)

    I routinely struggle to see why people think they can learn anything
    from these.


    and structural properties like rdf for a number of polymer
    molecules, system size around 3000 atoms.

    Thank you for your comments.
    Best,

constraints = none ; Run control integrator = md dt = 0.001 nsteps = 5000000 nstcomm = 100

nstenergy = 100 nstxout = 100 nstlist = 10 ns_type = grid coulombtype = Shift vdw-type = Shift rcoulomb-switch = 0 rvdw-switch = 0.9 ;0
    ;        Cut-offs
rlist = 1.25 rcoulomb = 1.0 rvdw = 1.0 Tcoupl = v-rescale tc-grps = System tau_t = 0.1 ref_t = 300 Pcoupl = berendsen Pcoupltype = isotropic tau_p = 1 compressibility = 3.5e-5 ref_p = 10 gen_vel = no gen_temp = 300.0 gen_seed = 173529








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--
========================================

Justin A. Lemkul
Ph.D. Candidate
ICTAS Doctoral Scholar
MILES-IGERT Trainee
Department of Biochemistry
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA
jalemkul[at]vt.edu | (540) 231-9080
http://www.bevanlab.biochem.vt.edu/Pages/Personal/justin

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