This is part of the multicolvar module

Measures the degree of similarity between dihedral angles.

This colvar calculates the following quantity.

\[ s = \frac{1}{2} \sum_i \left[ 1 + \cos( \phi_i - \psi_i ) \right] \]

where the \(\phi_i\) and \(\psi\) values and the instantaneous values for the TORSION angles of interest.

Examples

The following provides an example input for the DIHCOR action

Click on the labels of the actions for more information on what each action computes

dih: DIHCOR ... =1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 =5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 ...

In the above input we are calculating the correlation between the torsion angle involving atoms 1, 2, 3 and 4 and the torsion angle involving atoms 5, 6, 7 and 8. This is then added to the correlation between the torsion angle involving atoms 5, 6, 7 and 8 and the correlation angle involving atoms 9, 10, 11 and 12.

Writing out the atoms involved in all the torsion angles in this way can be rather tedious. Thankfully if you are working with protein you can avoid this by using the MOLINFO command. PLUMED uses the pdb file that you provide to this command to learn about the topology of the protein molecule. This means that you can specify torsion angles using the following syntax:

Click on the labels of the actions for more information on what each action computes

#SETTINGS MOLFILE=regtest/basic/rt32/helix.pdb

Here, @phi-3 tells plumed that you would like to calculate the \(\phi\) angle in the third residue of the protein. Similarly @psi-4 tells plumed that you want to calculate the \(\psi\) angle of the fourth residue of the protein.

Glossary of keywords and components

The atoms involved can be specified using

ATOMS

the set of 8 atoms that are being used each of the dihedral correlation values. For more information on how to specify lists of atoms see Groups and Virtual Atoms

Options

NOPBC

( default=off ) ignore the periodic boundary conditions when calculating distances