Physics Colloquium

Computer simulation methods based on empirical potentials or on the ab-initio approach have made invaluable contributions to our understanding of complex chemical and biochemical processes. However in spite of great progress in hardware, computer simulations often fall short of what is needed for a realistic description of the systems of interest. It suffices here to mention the fields of nanoscience and biomaterials where systems composed of a large number of atoms need to be studied over very long time scales. Particularly severe is the time scale problem. In this talk we shall describe methods for accelerating the study of slow processes and calculating free energies. The application and further development of these methods promises to go a long way towards pushing further the limits of computer simulation. Making processes like large scale protein motion or nucleation accessible to atomistic modeling.