Introduction

PLUMED Version 2.11

PLUMED is a community-developed code that can be used to incorporate additional functionality into multiple molecular dynamics codes and for analysing trajectories. PLUMED is currently interfaced with the list of codes described here.

PLUMED is a composed of a modules that contain a variety of different functionalities but that share a common basic syntax. You can find a list of the modules that are available within PLUMED here or you can see a graphical view of the modules and the dependencies between them here.

Each module contains implementations of a number of actions, shortcuts and command line tools. You can find a list of all the commands that you can use in a PLUMED input file here and descriptions of some of the tools you can use these commands with here.

Please also note that some developers prefer not to include their codes in PLUMED. To use functionality that has been written by these developed you can use the LOAD command.

You can find instructions for installing PLUMED here.

To run PLUMED you need to provide one input file. If you are completely unfamiliar with PLUMED we would recommend that you start by working through the following tutorial or the following 10-minute video.

You can find many other tutorials for PLUMED here and you can find examples of how PLUMED has been used in many academic research articles here.

If you would like to add new functionality to PLUMED you can find developer documentation here and a change log here.

The documentation in this manual was built on July 14, 2025.