Survey of adaptive biasing potentials: comparisons and outlook

Adaptive biasing potentials are becoming a standard tool of the trade for problems in chemistry, material science, biology, and drug discovery. These methods are easy to use, easy to distribute, reliable, and make otherwise impossible simulations possible. In this review we survey a number of adaptive bias potentials, and take a critical look at how they work. The biases fall into two basic classes, each having distinct attributes and levels of complexity. The vantage point from which the biases are discussed has only emerged in the last couple of years, and allows for a unified treatment of all the biases. We conclude with remarks about computational efficiency of the biases, which is largely overlooked in the current literature.