The multiscale coarse-graining method. X. Improved algorithms for constructing coarse-grained potentials for molecular systems

The multiscale coarse-graining (MS-CG) method uses simulation data for an atomistic model of a system to construct a coarse-grained (CG) potential for a coarse-grained model of the system. The CG potential is a variational approximation for the true potential of mean force of the degrees of freedom retained in the CG model. The variational calculation uses information about the atomistic positions and forces in the simulation data. In principle, the resulting MS-CG potential will be an accurate representation of the true CG potential if the basis set for the variational calculation is complete enough and the canonical distribution of atomistic states is well sampled by the data set. In practice, atomistic configurations that have very high potential energy are not sampled. As a result there usually is a region of CG configuration space that is not sampled and about which the data set contains no information regarding the gradient of the true potential. The MS-CG potential obtained from a variational calculation will not necessarily be accurate in this unsampled region. A priori considerations make it clear that the true CG potential of mean force must be very large and positive in that region. To obtain an MS-CG potential whose behavior in the sampled region is determined by the atomistic data set, and whose behavior in the unsampled region is large and positive, it is necessary to intervene in the variational calculation in some way. In this paper, we discuss and compare two such methods of intervention, which have been used in previous MS-CG calculations for dealing with nonbonded interactions. For the test systems studied, the two methods give similar results and yield MS-CG potentials that are limited in accuracy only by the incompleteness of the basis set and the statistical error of associated with the set of atomistic configurations used. The use of such methods is important for obtaining accurate CG potentials.