Wandering interface method

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The Wandering Interface Method (WIM) is a general, versatile and robust procedure for the calculation of surface free energies. It can be employed to calculate liquid-vapor surface tensions and solid-fluid interfacial tensions alike.

The method is based on a clear and appealing physical basis: since an interface has usually an extra energy cost, a system will try to stretch in order to minimize the interfacial area. The original feature of WIM is to allow the system's interfacial area to fluctuate freely and extract the surface free energy from the related surface area probability distribution .

During the course of the simulation, trial deformations of the simulation box at constant volume are attempted and either accepted or rejected according to the usual metropolis scheme. This provides a markovian random walk of the interfacial area. Collecting the surface area probability distribution, one can readily calculate the surface free energy, since, according to statistical mechanics, one can showv that: