Metadynamics

Abstract Metadynamics is a powerful technique for enhancing sampling in molecular dynamics simulations and reconstructing the free‐energy surface as a function of few selected degrees of freedom, often referred to as collective variables (CVs). In metadynamics, sampling is accelerated by a history‐dependent bias potential, which is adaptively constructed in the space of the CVs. Since its first appearance, significant improvements have been made to the original algorithm, leading to an efficient, flexible, and accurate method that has found many successful applications in several domains of science. Here, we discuss first the theory underlying metadynamics and its recent developments. In particular, we focus…