TY - GEN A1 - Hartmann, Carsten A1 - Richter, Lorenz A1 - Schütte, Christof A1 - Zhang, Wei T1 - Variational characterization of free energy: Theory and algorithms N2 - The article surveys and extends variational formulations of the thermodynamic free energy and discusses their information-theoretic content from the perspective of mathematical statistics. We revisit the well-known Jarzynski equality for nonequilibrium free energy sampling within the framework of importance sampling and Girsanov change-of-measure transformations. The implications of the different variational formulations for designing efficient stochastic optimization and nonequilibrium simulation algorithms for computing free energies are discussed and illustrated. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-52 KW - Importance sampling KW - Donsker-Varadhan principle KW - thermodynamic free energy KW - nonequilibrium molecular dynamics KW - stochastic approximation KW - cross-entropy method Y1 - 2017 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-zib/frontdoor/index/index/docId/6504 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-65045 SN - 1438-0064 ER -