Recovering hidden dynamical modes from the generalized Langevin equation

Abstract

In studying large molecular systems, insights can better be extracted by selecting a limited number of physical quantities for analysis rather than treating every atomic coordinate in detail. Some information may, however, be lost by projecting the total system onto a small number of coordinates. For such problems, the generalized Langevin equation (GLE) is shown to provide a useful framework to examine the interaction between the observed variables and their environment. Starting with the GLE obtained from the time series of the observed quantity, we perform a transformation to introduce a set of variables that describe dynamical modes existing in the environment. The introduced variables are shown to effectively recover the essential information of the total system that appeared to be lost by the projection.