Phase-space transition states relative equilibrium

Figure 1 Schematic behavior of the function f-AE) = v( )exp[—E/ gT] at a finite temperature T (see discussion about Eqs. [13]-[16]). For a large system, /ij.( ) has a sharp peak at the typical energy , and v( ) is very small, which means that the part of configurational space contributing significantly to this function is exceedingly small. In the case of a first-order phase transition, two peaks exist. A peptide can reside in several different stable states in thermodynamic equilibrium corresponding to several peaks of / j.( ) however because of the relatively small system size, the maxima of f (E) will not be sharp (compare with Figure 2).

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