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A good deal of molecular dynamics simulations aims at predicting and quantifying rare events, such as the folding of a protein or a phase transition. Simulating rare events is often prohibitive, especially if the equations of motion are high-dimensional, as is the case in molecular dynamics. Various algorithms have been proposed for efficiently computing mean first passage times, transition rates or reaction pathways. This article surveys and discusses recent developments in the field of rare event simulation and outlines a new approach that combines ideas from optimal control and statistical mechanics. The optimal control approach described in detail resembles the use of Jarzynski's equality for free energy calculations, but with an optimized protocol that speeds up the sampling, while (theoretically) giving variance-free estimators of the rare events statistics. We illustrate the new approach with two numerical examples and discuss its relation to existing methods.
Rare but important transition events between long lived states are a key feature of many molecular systems. In many cases the computation of rare event statistics by direct molecular dynamics (MD) simulations is infeasible even on the most powerful computers because of the immensely long simulation timescales needed. Recently a technique for spatial discretization of the molecular state space designed to help overcome such problems, so-called Markov State Models (MSMs), has attracted a lot of attention. We review the theoretical background and algorithmic realization of MSMs and illustrate their use by some numerical examples. Furthermore we introduce a novel approach to using MSMs for the efficient solution of optimal control problems that appear in applications where one desires to optimize molecular properties by means of external controls.