Deriving Reliable Nucleation Rates from Metadynamics Simulations: Application to Yukawa Fluids

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Arnold, B., Daligault, J., Saumon, D., Hu, S. X.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Arnold, B.
Daligault, J.
Saumon, D.
Hu, S. X.
author_facet Arnold, B.
Daligault, J.
Saumon, D.
Hu, S. X.
contents In order to solidify the usefulness of metadynamics in studying nucleation of crystals from supercooled liquids, we provide a specific procedure to calculate nucleation free energy barriers. After a pedagogical review of the important elements of classical nucleation theory and how metadynamics is used to find nucleation free energy barriers, we explain the benefits of local collective variables over more common global collective variables. We show how a metadynamics free energy barrier must be carefully postprocessed so that classical nucleation theory can be applied to calculate nucleation rates. We apply our procedure to a Yukawa plasma and show that a particular physically-motivated fit to metadynamics data reproduces low-temperature reference data, justifying the usefulness of metadynamics to predict nucleation rates and the nucleation critical temperature.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_00354
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deriving Reliable Nucleation Rates from Metadynamics Simulations: Application to Yukawa Fluids
Arnold, B.
Daligault, J.
Saumon, D.
Hu, S. X.
Statistical Mechanics
In order to solidify the usefulness of metadynamics in studying nucleation of crystals from supercooled liquids, we provide a specific procedure to calculate nucleation free energy barriers. After a pedagogical review of the important elements of classical nucleation theory and how metadynamics is used to find nucleation free energy barriers, we explain the benefits of local collective variables over more common global collective variables. We show how a metadynamics free energy barrier must be carefully postprocessed so that classical nucleation theory can be applied to calculate nucleation rates. We apply our procedure to a Yukawa plasma and show that a particular physically-motivated fit to metadynamics data reproduces low-temperature reference data, justifying the usefulness of metadynamics to predict nucleation rates and the nucleation critical temperature.
title Deriving Reliable Nucleation Rates from Metadynamics Simulations: Application to Yukawa Fluids
topic Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00354