Free energy surfaces from an extended harmonic superposition approach and kinetics for alanine dipeptide

Approximate free energy surfaces and transition rates are presented for alanine dipeptide for a variety of force fields and implicit solvent models. Our calculations are based upon local minima, transition states and pathways characterised for each potential energy surface using geometry optimisation. The superposition approach employing only local minima and harmonic densities of states provides a representation of low-lying regions of the free energy surfaces. However, including contributions from the transition states of the potential energy surface and selected points obtained from displacements along the corresponding reaction vectors produces surfaces that compare quite well with results from replica exchange molecular dynamics. Characterising the local minima, transition states, normal modes, pathways, rate constants and free energy surfaces for each force field within this framework typically requires between one and five minutes cpu time on a single processor.