Other Types of Perturbation
Many types of free-energy differences can be computed
Thermodynamic state
- temperature, density, mixture composition
Hamiltonian
- for a single molecule or for entire system
- e.g., evaluate free energy difference for hard spheres with and without electrostatic dipole moment
Configuration
- distance/orientation between two solutes
- e.g, protein and ligand
Order parameter identifying phases
- order parameter is a quantity that can be used to identify the thermodynamic phase a system is in
- e.g, crystal structure, orientational order, magnetization