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Register a new userSparse Sampling of Water Density Fluctuations near Liquid-Vapor Coexistence
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The free energetics of water density fluctuations in bulk water, at interfaces, and in hydrophobic confinement inform the hydration of hydrophobic solutes as well as their interactions and assembly. The characterization of such free energetics is typically performed using enhanced sampling techniques such as umbrella sampling. In umbrella sampling, order parameter distributions obtained from adjacent biased simulations must overlap in order to estimate free energy differences between biased ensembles. Many biased simulations are typically required to ensure such overlap, which exacts a steep computational cost. We recently introduced a sparse sampling method, which circumvents the overlap requirement by using thermodynamic integration to estimate free energy differences between biased ensembles. Here we build upon and generalize sparse sampling for characterizing the free energetics of water density fluctuations in systems near liquid-vapor coexistence. We also introduce sensible heuristics for choosing the biasing potential parameters and strategies for adaptively refining them, which facilitate the estimation of such free energetics accurately and efficiently. We illustrate the method by characterizing the free energetics of cavitation in a large volume in bulk water. We also use sparse sampling to characterize the free energetics of capillary evaporation for water confined between two hydrophobic plates. In both cases, sparse sampling is nearly two orders of magnitude faster than umbrella sampling. Given its efficiency, the sparse sampling method is particularly well suited for characterizing free energy landscapes for systems wherein umbrella sampling is prohibitively expensive.
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The free energetics of water density fluctuations near a surface, and the rare low-density fluctuations in particular, serve as reliable indicators of surface hydrophobicity; the easier it is to displace the interfacial waters, the more hydrophobic the underlying surface. However, characterizing the free energetics of such rare fluctuations requires computationally expensive, non-Boltzmann sampling methods like umbrella sampling. This inherent computational expense associated with umbrella sampling makes it challenging to investigate the role of polarizability or electronic structure effects in influencing interfacial fluctuations. Importantly, it also limits the size of the volume, which can be used to probe interfacial fluctuations. The latter can be particularly important in characterizing the hydrophobicity of large surfaces with molecular-level heterogeneities, such as those presented by proteins. To overcome these challenges, here we present a method for the sparse sampling of water density fluctuations, which is roughly two orders of magnitude more efficient than umbrella sampling. We employ thermodynamic integration to estimate the free energy differences between biased ensembles, thereby circumventing the umbrella sampling requirement of overlap between adjacent biased distributions. Further, a judicious choice of the biasing potential allows such free energy differences to be estimated using short simulations, so that the free energetics of water density fluctuations are obtained using only a few, short simulations. Leveraging the efficiency of the method, we characterize water density fluctuations in the entire hydration shell of the protein, ubiquitin; a large volume containing an average of more than six hundred waters.
We describe a simple method that can be used to sample the rare fluctuations of discrete-time Markov chains. We focus on the case of Markov chains with well-defined steady-state measures, and derive expressions for the large-deviation rate functions (and upper bounds on such functions) for dynamical quantities extensive in the length of the Markov chain. We illustrate the method using a series of simple examples, and use it to study the fluctuations of a lattice-based model of active matter that can undergo motility-induced phase separation.
The phase diagram of two-dimensional continuous particle systems is studied using Event-Chain Monte Carlo. For soft disks with repulsive power-law interactions $propto r^{-n}$ with $n gtrsim 6$, the recently established hard-disk melting scenario ($n to infty$) holds: a first-order liquid-hexatic and a continuous hexatic-solid transition are identified. Close to $n = 6$, the coexisting liquid exhibits very long orientational correlations, and positional correlations in the hexatic are extremely short. For $nlesssim 6$, the liquid-hexatic transition is continuous, with correlations consistent with the Kosterlitz-Thouless-Halperin-Nelson-Yong (KTHNY) scenario. To illustrate the generality of these results, we demonstrate that Yukawa particles likewise may follow either the KTHNY or the hard-disk melting scenario, depending on the Debye-Huckel screening length as well as on the temperature.
A smooth cut-off formulation of the Hierarchical Reference Theory (HRT) is developed and applied to a Yukawa fluid. The HRT equations are derived and numerically solved leading to: the expected renormalization group structure in the critical region, non classical critical exponents and scaling laws, a convex free energy in the whole phase diagram (including the two-phase region), finite compressibility at coexistence, together with a fully satisfactory comparison with available numerical simulations. This theory, which also guarantees the correct short range behavior of two body correlations, represents a major improvement over the existing liquid state theories.
Among the many existing molecular models of water, the MB-pol many-body potential has emerged as a remarkably accurate model, capable of reproducing thermodynamic, structural, and dynamic properties across waters solid, liquid, and vapor phases. In this work, we assessed the performance of MB-pol with respect to an important set of properties related to vapor-liquid coexistence and interfacial behavior. Through direct coexistence classical molecular dynamics simulations at temperatures 400 K < T < 600 K, we calculated properties such as equilibrium coexistence densities, vapor-liquid interfacial tension, vapor pressure, and enthalpy of vaporization, and compared the MB-pol results to experimental data. We also compared rigid vs. fully flexible variants of the MB-pol model and evaluated system size effects for the properties studied. We found that the MB-pol model predictions are in good agreement with experimental data, even for temperatures approaching the vapor-liquid critical point; this agreement was largely insensitive to system size or the rigid vs. flexible treatment of the intramolecular degrees of freedom. These results attest to the chemical accuracy of MB-pol and its high degree of transferability, thus enabling MB-pols application across a large swath of waters phase diagram.
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