Free-energy expansion method

Kirkwood generalized the Onsager reaction field method to arbitrary charge distributions and, for a spherical cavity, obtained the Gibbs free energy of solvation in tenns of a miiltipole expansion of the electrostatic field generated by the charge distribution [12, 1 3]... 

A potential advantage of methods based on a series expansion of the free energy is that the convergence of the series is determined by the A dependence of the potential energy function meaning that the efficiency of the approach could be enhanced by a judicious choice of coupling scheme. 

Appendix 11.3 Expansion of Zwanzig Expression for the Free Energy Difference for the Linear Response Method... 

These considerations raise a question how can we determine the optimal value of n and the coefficients i < n in (2.54) and (2.56) Clearly, if the expansion is truncated too early, some terms that contribute importantly to Po(AU) will be lost. On the other hand, terms above some threshold carry no information, and, instead, only add statistical noise to the probability distribution. One solution to this problem is to use physical intuition [40]. Perhaps a better approach is that based on the maximum likelihood (ML) method, in which we determine the maximum number of terms supported by the provided information. For the expansion in (2.54), calculating the number of Gaussian functions, their mean values and variances using ML is a standard problem solved in many textbooks on Bayesian inference [43]. For the expansion in (2.56), the ML solution for n and o, also exists, lust like in the case of the multistate Gaussian model, this equation appears to improve the free energy estimates considerably when P0(AU) is a broad function. 

Since the linear and related expansion formulas depend on fits to regions of the curve that are statistically less and less reliable, it makes sense to find a measure for extrapolation that depends on the relative accuracy of the relative free energy estimate for all points along the curve. The cumulative integral extrapolation method is one approach to this idea. 

A first step toward quantum mechanical approximations for free energy calculations was made by Wigner and Kirkwood. A clear derivation of their method is given by Landau and Lifshitz [43]. They employ a plane-wave expansion to compute approximate canonical partition functions which then generate free energy models. The method produces an expansion of the free energy in powers of h. Here we just quote several of the results of their derivation. 

In the case of determining the freezing temperature, a more robust calculation for the solid phase must be completed, as the solid lattice free energy calculation must consider factors, such as the Pauling entropy. For this reason, the latticecoupling-expansion method, which incorporates such factors, is employed for these types of simulations. For the Einstein lattice used in the simulations, a 6 x 4 x 4 unit cell was used, which consists of 768 water molecules. This simulations size was... 

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