The histogramRestraint bias implements a continuous potential of many variables (or of a single high-dimensional variable) aimed at reproducing a one-dimensional statistical distribution that is provided by the user.
The
variables
are interpreted as multiple observations of a random variable
with unknown probability distribution.
The potential is minimized when the histogram
, estimated as a sum of Gaussian functions centered at
, is equal to the reference histogram
:
This bias behaves similarly to the histogram bias with the gatherVectorColvars option, with the important difference that all variables are gathered, resulting in a one-dimensional histogram. Future versions will include support for multi-dimensional histograms.
The list of options is as follows: