TY - JOUR A1 - Wang, Han A1 - Schütte, Christof A1 - Ciccotti, Giovanni A1 - von Kleist, Max T1 - Exploring the conformational dynamics of alanine dipeptide in solution subjected to an external electric field: A nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulation T2 - Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation N2 - In this paper, we investigate the conformational dynamics of alanine dipeptide under an external electric field by nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulation. We consider the case of a constant and of an oscillatory field. In this context, we propose a procedure to implement the temperature control, which removes the irrelevant thermal effects of the field. For the constant field different time-scales are identified in the conformational, dipole moment, and orientational dynamics. Moreover, we prove that the solvent structure only marginally changes when the external field is switched on. In the case of oscillatory field, the conformational changes are shown to be as strong as in the previous case, and nontrivial nonequilibrium circular paths in the conformation space are revealed by calculating the integrated net probability fluxes. Y1 - 2014 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-zib/frontdoor/index/index/docId/5218 VL - 10 IS - 4 SP - 1376 EP - 1386 ER -