Predicting reaction coordinates in energy landscapes with diffusion anisotropy

Abstract: We consider a range of model potentials with metastable states undergoing molecular dynamics coupled to a thermal bath in the high friction regime, and consider how the optimal reaction coordinate depends on the diffusion anisotropy. For this we use our recently proposed method 'Spectral gap optimization of order parameters (SGOOP)' (Tiwary and Berne, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 113 2839 2016). We show how available information about dynamical observables in addition to static information can be incorporated into SGOOP, which can then be used to accurately determine the 'best' reaction coordinate for arbitrary anisotropies. We compare our results with transmission coefficient calculations and published benchmarks where applicable or available respectively.