Ab initio molecular dynamics of liquid water using embedded-fragment second-order many-body perturbation theory towards its accurate property prediction

A direct, simultaneous calculation of properties of a liquid using an ab initio electron-correlated theory has long been unthinkable. Here we present structural, dynamical, and response properties of liquid water calculated by ab initio molecular dynamics using the embedded-fragment spin-component-scaled second-order many-body perturbation method with the aug-cc-pVDZ basis set. This level of theory is chosen as it accurately and inexpensively reproduces the water dimer potential energy surface from the coupled-cluster singles, doubles, and noniterative triples with the augcc-pVQZ basis set, which is nearly exact. The calculated radial distribution function, self-diffusion coefficient, coordinate number, and dipole moment, as well as the infrared and Raman spectra are in excellent agreement with experimental results. The shapes and widths of the OH stretching bands in the infrared and Raman spectra and their isotropic-anisotropic Raman noncoincidence, which reflect the diverse local hydrogen-bond environment, are also reproduced computationally. The simulation also reveals intriguing dynamic features of the environment, which are difficult to probe experimentally, such as a surprisingly large fluctuation in the coordination number and the detailed mechanism by which the hydrogen donating water molecules move across the first and second shells, thereby causing this fluctuationopen

A fast path integral method for polarizable force fields.

A quantum simulation of an imaginary time path integral typically requires around n times more computational effort than the corresponding classical simulation, where n is the number of ring polymer beads (or imaginary time slices) used in the calculation. It is however possible to improve on this estimate by decomposing the potential into a sum of slowly and rapidly varying contributions. If the slowly varying contribution changes only slightly over the length scale of the ring polymer, it can be evaluated on a contracted ring polymer with fewer than the full n beads (or equivalently on a lower order Fourier decomposition of the imaginary time path). Here we develop and test this idea for systems with polarizable force fields. The development consists of iterating the induction on the contracted ring polymer and applying an appropriate transformation to obtain the forces on the original n beads. In combination with a splitting of the Coulomb potential into its short- and long-range parts, this results in a method with little more than classical computational effort in the limit of large system size. The method is illustrated with simulations of liquid water at 300 K and hexagonal ice at 100 K using a recently developed flexible and polarizable Thole-type potential energy model

Properties of water confined in hydroxyapatite nanopores as derived from molecular dynamics simulations

N.H. de Leeuw is grateful to ‘Université ParisEst Créteil’ (UPEC) for financial support received during the course of this research. T.T. Pham is grateful to the ‘Institut des sciences de l’ingénierie et des systèmes’ (INSIS) of the ‘Centre national de la recherche scientifique’ (CNRS) for financial support received during the course of this research. D. Di Tommaso would like to thank the Royal Society, UK, for the award of a Royal Society Industry Fellowship

Nuclear quantum effects enter the mainstream

Over the past decades, atomistic simulations of chemical, biological and materials systems have become increasingly precise and predictive thanks to the development of accurate and efficient techniques that describe the quantum mechanical behavior of electrons. However, the overwhelming majority of such simulations still assume that the nuclei behave as classical particles. While historically this approximation could sometimes be justified due to complexity and computational overhead, the lack of nuclear quantum effects has become one of the biggest sources of error when systems containing light atoms are treated using current state-of-the-art descriptions of chemical interactions. Over the past decade, this realization has spurred a series of methodological advances that have led to dramatic reductions in the cost of including these important physical effects in the structure and dynamics of chemical systems. Here we show how these developments are now allowing nuclear quantum effects to become a mainstream feature of molecular simulations. These advances have led to new insights into chemical processes in the condensed phase and open the door to many exciting future opportunities.Comment: Pre-review versio