We introduce a novel simple algorithm for thermostatting path integral molecular dynamics (PIMD) with the Langevin equation. The staging transformation of path integral beads is employed for demonstration. The optimum friction coefficients for the staging modes in the free particle limit are used for all systems. In comparison to the path integral Langevin equation thermostat, the new algorithm exploits a different order of splitting for the phase space propagator associated to the Langevin equation. While the error analysis is made for both algorithms, they are also employed in the PIMD simulations of three realistic systems (the H2O molecule, liquid para-hydrogen, and liquid water) for comparison. It is shown that the new thermostat increases the time interval of PIMD by a factor of 4-6 or more for achieving the same accuracy. In addition, the supplementary material shows the error analysis made for the algorithms when the normal-mode transformation of path integral beads is used.
We
have recently proposed a new unified theoretical scheme (the “middle”
scheme) for thermostat algorithms for efficient and accurate configurational
sampling of the canonical ensemble. In this paper, we extend the “middle”
scheme to molecular dynamics algorithms for configurational sampling
in systems subject to constraints. Holonomic constraints and isokinetic
constraints are used for demonstration. Numerical examples indicate
that the “middle” scheme presents a promising approach
to calculate configuration-dependent thermodynamic properties and
their thermal fluctuations.
We show a unified second-order scheme for constructing simple, robust and accurate algorithms for typical thermostats for configurational sampling for the canonical ensemble. When Langevin dynamics is used, the scheme leads to the BAOAB algorithm that has been recently investigated.We show that the scheme is also useful for other types of thermostat, such as the Andersen thermostat and Nosé-Hoover chain, regardless of whether the thermostat is deterministic or stochastic. In addition to analytical analysis, two 1-dimensional models and three typical realistic molecular systems that range from the gas phase, clusters, to the condensed phase are used in numerical examples for demonstration. Accuracy may be increased by an order of magnitude for estimating coordinate-dependent properties in molecular dynamics (when the same time interval is used), irrespective of which type of thermostat is applied. The scheme is especially useful for path integral molecular dynamics, because it consistently improves the efficiency for evaluating all thermodynamic properties for any type of thermostat.4
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