Pressure control using stochastic cell rescaling

Abstract

Molecular dynamics simulations require barostats to be performed at constant pressure. The usual recipe is to employ the Berendsen barostat first, which displays a first-order volume relaxation efficient in equilibration but results in incorrect volume fluctuations, followed by a second order or Monte Carlo barostat for production runs. In this paper, we introduce stochastic cell rescaling, a first-order barostat that samples the correct volume fluctuations by including a suitable noise term. The algorithm is shown to report volume fluctuations compatible with the isobaric ensemble and its anisotropic variant is tested on a membrane simulation. Stochastic cell rescaling can be straightforwardly implemented in existing codes and can be used effectively both in equilibration and in production phases.

Supporting information included in ancillary files. The article has been accepted by J. Chem. Phys

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