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Register a new userSolvent Fluctuations and Nuclear Quantum Effects Modulate the Molecular Hyperpolarizability of Water
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Second-Harmonic Scatteringh (SHS) experiments provide a unique approach to probe non-centrosymmetric environments in aqueous media, from bulk solutions to interfaces, living cells and tissue. A central assumption made in analyzing SHS experiments is that the each molecule scatters light according to a constant molecular hyperpolarizability tensor $boldsymbol{beta}^{(2)}$. Here, we investigate the dependence of the molecular hyperpolarizability of water on its environment and internal geometric distortions, in order to test the hypothesis of constant $boldsymbol{beta}^{(2)}$. We use quantum chemistry calculations of the hyperpolarizability of a molecule embedded in point-charge environments obtained from simulations of bulk water. We demonstrate that both the heterogeneity of the solvent configurations and the quantum mechanical fluctuations of the molecular geometry introduce large variations in the non-linear optical response of water. This finding has the potential to change the way SHS experiments are interpreted: in particular, isotopic differences between H$_2$O and D$_2$O could explain recent second-harmonic scattering observations. Finally, we show that a simple machine-learning framework can predict accurately the fluctuations of the molecular hyperpolarizability. This model accounts for the microscopic inhomogeneity of the solvent and represents a first step towards quantitative modelling of SHS experiments.
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Nuclear quantum effects, such as zero-point energy and tunneling, cause significant changes to the structure and dynamics of hydrogen bonded systems such as liquid water. However, due to the current inability to simulate liquid water using an exact description of its electronic structure, the interplay between nuclear and electronic quantum effects remains unclear. Here we use simulations that incorporate the quantum mechanical nature of both the nuclei and electrons to provide a fully ab initio determination of the particle quantum kinetic energies, free energy change upon exchanging hydrogen for deuterium and the isotope fractionation ratio in water. These properties, which selectively probe the quantum nature of the nuclear degrees of freedom, allow us to make direct comparison to recent experiments and elucidate how electronic exchange and correlation and nuclear quantum fluctuations determine the structure of the hydrogen bond in water.
The resolving power of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) crystallography depends heavily on the accuracy of the computational prediction of NMR chemical shieldings of candidate structures, which are usually taken to be local minima in the potential energy surface. To test the limits of this approximation, we perform a systematic study of the role of finite-temperature and quantum nuclear fluctuations on $^1$H, $^{13}$C, and $^{15}$N chemical shieldings in molecular crystals -- considering the paradigmatic examples of the different polymorphs of benzene, glycine, and succinic acid. We find the effect of quantum fluctuations to be comparable in size to the typical errors of predictions of chemical shieldings for static nuclei with respect to experimental measurements, and to improve the match between experiments and theoretical predictions, translating to more reliable assignment of the NMR spectra to the correct candidate structure. Thanks to the use of integrated machine-learning models trained on both first-principles configurational energies and chemical shieldings, the accurate sampling of thermal and quantum fluctuations of the structures can be achieved at an affordable cost, setting a new standard for the calculations that underlie solid-state structural determination by NMR.
The energies of molecular excited states arise as solutions to the electronic Schr{o}dinger equation and are often compared to experiment. At the same time, nuclear quantum motion is known to be important and to induce a red-shift of excited state energies. However, it is thus far unclear whether incorporating nuclear quantum motion in molecular excited state calculations leads to a systematic improvement of their predictive accuracy, making further investigation necessary. Here we present such an investigation by employing two first-principles methods for capturing the effect of quantum fluctuations on excited state energies, which we apply to the Thiel set of organic molecules. We show that accounting for zero-point motion leads to much improved agreement with experiment, compared to `static calculations which only account for electronic effects, and the magnitude of the red-shift can become as large as 1.36 eV. Moreover, we show that the effect of nuclear quantum motion on excited state energies largely depends on the molecular size, with smaller molecules exhibiting larger red-shifts. Our methodology also makes it possible to analyze the contribution of individual vibrational normal modes to the red-shift of excited state energies, and in several molecules we identify a limited number of modes dominating this effect. Overall, our study provides a foundation for systematically quantifying the shift of excited state energies due to nuclear quantum motion, and for understanding this effect at a microscopic level.
We show that the centroid molecular dynamics (CMD) method provides a realistic way to calculate the thermal diffusivity $a=lambda/rho c_{rm V}$ of a quantum mechanical liquid such as para-hydrogen. Once $a$ has been calculated, the thermal conductivity can be obtained from $lambda=rho c_{rm V}a$, where $rho$ is the density of the liquid and $c_{rm V}$ is the constant-volume heat capacity. The use of this formula requires an accurate quantum mechanical heat capacity $c_{rm V}$, which can be obtained from a path integral molecular dynamics simulation. The thermal diffusivity can be calculated either from the decay of the equilibrium density fluctuations in the liquid or by using the Green-Kubo relation to calculate the CMD approximation to $lambda$ and then dividing this by the corresponding approximation to $rho c_{rm V}$. We show that both approaches give the same results for liquid para-hydrogen and that these results are in good agreement with experimental measurements of the thermal conductivity over a wide temperature range. In particular, they correctly predict a decrease in the thermal conductivity at low temperatures -- an effect that stems from the decrease in the quantum mechanical heat capacity and has eluded previous para-hydrogen simulations. We also show that the method gives equally good agreement with experimental measurements for the thermal conductivity of normal liquid helium.
The microscopic orientation and position of photoactive molecules is crucial to the operation of optoelectronic devices such as OLEDs and solar cells. Here, we introduce a shape-persistent macrocyclic molecule as an excellent fluorescent probe to simply measure (i) its orientation by rotating the excitation polarization and recording the strength of modulation in photoluminescence (PL), and (ii) its position in a film by analyzing the overall PL brightness at the molecular level. The unique shape, the absorption and the fluorescence properties of this probe yields information on molecular orientation and position. We control orientation and positioning of the probe in a polymer film by solvent vapor annealing (SVA). During the SVA process the molecules accumulate at the polymer/air interface, where they adopt a flat conformation, much like water lilies on the surface of a pond. The results are significant for OLED fabrication and single-molecule spectroscopy (SMS) in general.
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