Efficient transition path sampling for systems with multiple reaction pathways

A new algorithm is developed for sampling transition paths and computing reaction rates. To illustrate the use of this method, we study a two-dimensional system that has two reaction pathways: one pathway is straight with a relatively high barrier and the other is roundabout with a lower barrier. The transition rate and the ratio between the numbers of the straight and roundabout transition paths are computed for a wide range of temperatures. Our study shows that the harmonic approximation for fluctuations about the steepest-descent paths is not valid even at relatively low temperatures and, furthermore, that factors related to entropy have to be determined by the global geometry of the potential-energy surface (rather than just the local curvatures alone) for complex reaction systems. It is reasonable to expect that this algorithm is also applicable to higher dimensional systems. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.