DETERMINATION OF THE CHEMICAL-POTENTIAL BY THE PARTICLE INSERTION METHOD AND BY ITS INVERSE

An explanation has been found for the disparity between two widely use d and apparently equivalent methods for the determination of the chemi cal potential by molecular simulation. There is a hitherto unrealised error in the implementation and this is sufficient to explain the disc repancies observed; the possibility of correcting for this source of e rror is considered. There is no reason to seek further for errors in t he underlying statistical mechanical theory. The different patterns of random errors in the two methods arising from their very different sa mpling distributions are not considered here.