Molecular simulation is an essential tool in understanding complex chemical and biochemical processes as real-life experiments prove increasingly costly or infeasible in practice . This thesis is devoted to methodological aspects of molecular simulation, with a particular focus on computing transition paths and their associated free energy profiles. The first part is dedicated to computational methods for reaction path and transition state searches on a potential energy surface. In Chapter 3 we propose an improvement to a widely-used transition state search method, the Activation Relaxation Technique (ART). We also present a local convergence study of a prototypical algorithm. The second part is dedicated to free energy computations. We focus in particular on an adaptive importance sampling technique, the Adaptive Biasing Force (ABF) method. The first contribution to this field, presented in Chapter 5, consists in showing the applicability to a large molecular system of a new parallel implementation, named multiple-walker ABF (MW-ABF). Numerical experiments demonstrated the robustness of MW-ABF against artefacts arising due to poorly chosen or oversimplified reaction coordinates. These numerical findings inspired a new study of the longtime convergence of the ABF method, as presented in Chapter 6. By studying a slightly modified model, we back our numerical results by showing a faster theoretical rate of convergence of ABF than was previously shown

La simulation moléculaire est un outil indispensable pour comprendre le comportement de systèmes complexes pour lesquels les expériences s'avèrent coûteuses ou irréalisables à l'heure actuelle. Cette thèse est dédiée aux aspects méthodologiques de la simulation moléculaire et comprend deux volets. Le premier volet porte sur la recherche de chemins de réaction et de points col d'une surface d'énergie potentielle. Nous proposons, dans le chaptire 3, une amélioration d'une des méthodes de cette classe, appelée '"Activation Relaxation Technique"(ART). Nous donnons également une preuve de convergence pour un algorithme prototype. Le deuxieme volet porte sur le calcul d'énergie libre pour les transitions caractérisées par une coordonnée de réaction. Nous nous plaçons dans le cadre d'une méthode d'échantillonnage d'importance adaptative, appelée 'Adaptive Biasing Force' (ABF). Ce volet comprend en soi deux sous-parties. La première partie (chapitre 5) s'attache à montrer l'applicabilité à un système biomoléculaire, d'une nouvelle mise en oeuvre parallèle d'ABF, nommée 'multiple-walker ABF' (MW-ABF), consistant à utiliser plusieurs répliques. Cette mise en oeuvre s'est avérée utile pour surmonter des problèmes liés à un mauvais choix de coordonnée de réaction. Nous confirmons ensuite ces résultats numériques en étudiant la convergence théorique d'un algorithme d'ABF adapté. Le chapitre 6 comprend une étude de convergence en temps long utilisant les méthodes d'entropie relative et les inégalités de Sobolev logarithmiques / Molecular simulation is an essential tool in understanding complex chemical and biochemical processes as real-life experiments prove increasingly costly or infeasible in practice . This thesis is devoted to methodological aspects of molecular simulation, with a particular focus on computing transition paths and their associated free energy profiles. The first part is dedicated to computational methods for reaction path and transition state searches on a potential energy surface. In Chapter 3 we propose an improvement to a widely-used transition state search method, the Activation Relaxation Technique (ART). We also present a local convergence study of a prototypical algorithm. The second part is dedicated to free energy computations. We focus in particular on an adaptive importance sampling technique, the Adaptive Biasing Force (ABF) method. The first contribution to this field, presented in Chapter 5, consists in showing the applicability to a large molecular system of a new parallel implementation, named multiple-walker ABF (MW-ABF). Numerical experiments demonstrated the robustness of MW-ABF against artefacts arising due to poorly chosen or oversimplified reaction coordinates. These numerical findings inspired a new study of the longtime convergence of the ABF method, as presented in Chapter 6. By studying a slightly modified model, we back our numerical results by showing a faster theoretical rate of convergence of ABF than was previously shown