No Arabic abstract
We report the results of molecular dynamics simulations of the properties of a pseudo-atom model of dodecane thiol ligated 5-nm diameter gold nanoparticles (AuNP) in vacuum as a function of ligand coverage and particle separation in three state of aggregation: the isolated AuNP, an isolated pair of AuNPs and a square assembly of AuNPs. Our calculations show that for all values of the coverage the ligand density along a radius emanating from the core of an isolated AuNP oscillates along the chain up to the fourth pseudo-atom, then smoothly decays to zero. We examine the ligand envelope as a function of the coverage and demonstrate that the deformation of that envelope generated by interaction between the NPs is coverage-dependent, so that the shape, depth and position of the minimum of the potential of mean force displays a systematic dependence on the coverage. We propose an accurate analytical description of the calculated potential of mean force with parameters that scale linearly with the ligand coverage. We define and calculate an effective pair potential of mean force for a square configuration of particles; our definition contains, implicitly, both the three- and four-particle contributions to deviation from additivity. We find that the effective pair potential of mean force in this configuration has a different minimum and a different well depth than the isolated pair potential of mean force. Previous work has found that the three-particle contribution to deviation from additivity is monotone repulsive, whereas we find that the combined three- and four-particle contributions have an attractive well, implying that the three- and four-particle contributions are of comparable magnitude but opposite sign, thereby suggesting that even higher order correction terms likely play a significant role in the behavior of assemblies of many nanoparticles.
It is well-known that the interaction between passivated nanoparticles can be tuned by their complete immersion in a chosen solvent, such as water. What remains unclear on a molecular level is how nanoparticle interactions may be altered in the presence of solvent vapor where complete immersion is not achieved. In this paper, we report an all-atom molecular dynamics simulation study of the change in pair potential of mean force between dodecane thiol ligated gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) when exposed to water vapor. With the equilibrium vapor pressure of water at 25 degree C, there is very rapid condensation of water molecules onto the surface of the AuNPs in the form of mobile clusters of 100-2000 molecules that eventually coalesce into a few large clusters. When the distance between two AuNPs decreases, a water cluster bridging them provides an adhesive force that increases the depth and alters the shape of the pair-potential of mean force. That change of shape includes a decreased curvature near the minimum, consistent with experimental data showing that cyclic exposure to water vapor and its removal reversibly decreases and increases the Youngs modulus of a freely suspended self-assembled monolayer of these AuNPs.
This article presents several challenges to nuclear many-body theory and our understanding of the stability of nuclear matte r. In order to achieve this, we present five different cases, starting with an idealized toy model. These cases expose problems that need to be understood in order to match recent advances in nuclear theory with current experimental programs in low-energy nuclear physics. In particular, we focus on our current understanding, or lack thereof, of many-body forces, and how they evolve as functions of the number of particles . We provide examples of discrepancies between theory and experiment and outline some selected perspectives for future research directions.
The accurate representation of multidimensional potential energy surfaces is a necessary requirement for realistic computer simulations of molecular systems. The continued increase in computer power accompanied by advances in correlated electronic structure methods nowadays enable routine calculations of accurate interaction energies for small systems, which can then be used as references for the development of analytical potential energy functions (PEFs) rigorously derived from many-body expansions. Building on the accuracy of the MB-pol many-body PEF, we investigate here the performance of permutationally invariant polynomials, neural networks, and Gaussian approximation potentials in representing water two-body and three-body interaction energies, denoting the resulting potentials PIP-MB-pol, BPNN-MB-pol, and GAP-MB-pol, respectively. Our analysis shows that all three analytical representations exhibit similar levels of accuracy in reproducing both two-body and three-body reference data as well as interaction energies of small water clusters obtained from calculations carried out at the coupled cluster level of theory, the current gold standard for chemical accuracy. These results demonstrate the synergy between interatomic potentials formulated in terms of a many-body expansion, such as MB-pol, that are physically sound and transferable, and machine-learning techniques that provide a flexible framework to approximate the short-range interaction energy terms.
We investigate ground state properties of singly charged chlorine (Cl$^-$) and gold (Au$^-$) negative ions by employing four-component relativistic many-body methods. In our approach, we attach an electron to the respective outer orbitals of chlorine (Cl) and gold (Au) atoms to determine the Dirac-Fock (DF) wave functions of the ground state configurations of Cl$^-$ and Au$^-$, respectively. As a result, all the single-particle orbitals see the correlation effects due to the appended electron of the negative ion. After obtaining the DF wave functions, lower-order many-body perturbation methods, random-phase approximation, and coupled-cluster (CC) theory in the singles and doubles approximation are applied to obtain the ground state wave functions of both Cl$^-$ and Au$^-$ ions. Then, we adopt two different approaches to the CC theory -- a perturbative approach due to the dipole operator to determine electric dipole polarizability and an electron detachment approach in the Fock-space framework to estimate ionization potential. Our calculations are compared with the available experimental and other theoretical results.
We check the ab initio GW approximation and Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) many-body methodology against the exact solution benchmark of the hydrogen molecule H$_2$ ground state and excitation spectrum, and in comparison with the configuration interaction (CI) and time-dependent Hartree-Fock methods. The comparison is made on all the states we could unambiguously identify from the excitonic wave functions symmetry. At the equilibrium distance $R = 1.4 , a_0$, the GW+BSE energy levels are in good agreement with the exact results, with an accuracy of 0.1~0.2 eV. GW+BSE potential-energy curves are also in good agreement with the CI and the exact result up to $2.3 , a_0$. The solution no longer exists beyond $3.0 , a_0$ for triplets ($4.3 , a_0$ for singlets) due to instability of the ground state. We tried to improve the GW reference ground state by a renormalized random-phase approximation (r-RPA), but this did not solve the problem.