Deconstructing classical water models at interfaces and in bulk

Using concepts from perturbation and local molecular field theories of liquids we divide the potential of the SPC/E water model into short and long ranged parts. The short ranged parts define a minimal reference network model that captures very well the structure of the local hydrogen bond network in bulk water while ignoring effects of the remaining long ranged interactions. This deconstruction can provide insight into the different roles that the local hydrogen bond network, dispersion forces, and long ranged dipolar interactions play in determining a variety of properties of SPC/E and related classical models of water. Here we focus on the anomalous behavior of the internal pressure and the temperature dependence of the density of bulk water. We further utilize these short ranged models along with local molecular field theory to quantify the influence of these interactions on the structure of hydrophobic interfaces and the crossover from small to large scale hydration behavior. The implications of our findings for theories of hydrophobicity and possible refinements of classical water models are also discussed.

On the efficient and accurate short-ranged simulations of uniform polar molecular liquids

We show that spherical truncations of the 1/r interactions in models for water and acetonitrile yield very accurate results in bulk simulations for all site-site pair correlation functions as well as dipole-dipole correlation functions. This good performance in bulk simulations contrasts with the generally poor results found with the use of such truncations in nonuniform molecular systems. We argue that Local Molecular Field (LMF) theory provides a general theoretical framework that gives the necessary corrections to simple truncations in most nonuniform environments and explains the accuracy of spherical truncations in uniform environments by showing that these corrections are very small. LMF theory is derived from the exact Yvon-Born-Green (YBG) hierarchy by making physically-motivated and well-founded approximations. New and technically interesting derivations of both the YBG hierarchy and LMF theory for a variety of site-site molecular models are presented in appendices. The main paper focuses on understanding the accuracy of these spherical truncations in uniform systems both phenomenologically and quantitatively using LMF theory.

Accurate Thermodynamics for Short-Ranged Truncations of Coulomb Interactions in Site-Site Molecular Models

Coulomb interactions are present in a wide variety of all-atom force fields. Spherical truncations of these interactions permit fast simulations but are problematic due to their incorrect thermodynamics. Herein we demonstrate that simple analytical corrections for the thermodynamics of uniform truncated systems are possible. In particular results for the SPC/E water model treated with spherically-truncated Coulomb interactions suggested by local molecular field theory [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 105, 19136 (2008)] are presented. We extend results developed by Chandler [J. Chem. Phys. 65, 2925 (1976)] so that we may treat the thermodynamics of mixtures of flexible charged and uncharged molecules simulated with spherical truncations. We show that the energy and pressure of spherically-truncated bulk SPC/E water are easily corrected using exact second-moment-like conditions on long-ranged structure. Furthermore, applying the pressure correction as an external pressure removes the density errors observed by other research groups in NPT simulations of spherically-truncated bulk species.

Exact relations between charge-density functions determining the total Coulomb energy and the dielectric constant for a mixture of neutral and charged site-site molecules

We extend results developed by Chandler [J. Chem. Phys. 65, 2925 (1976)] for the dielectric constant of neutral site-site molecular models to mixtures of both charged and uncharged molecules. This provides a unified derivation connecting the Stillinger-Lovett moment conditions for ions to standard results for the dielectric constant for polar species and yields exact expressions for the small-k expansion of the two-point intermolecular charge-density function used to determine the total Coulomb energy. The latter is useful in determining corrections to the thermodynamics of uniform site-site molecular models simulated with spherically truncated Coulomb interactions.

Local molecular field theory for the treatment of electrostatics

We examine in detail the theoretical underpinnings of previous successful applications of local molecular field (LMF) theory to charged systems. LMF theory generally accounts for the averaged effects of long-ranged components of the intermolecular interactions by using an effective or restructured external field. The derivation starts from the exact Yvon-Born-Green hierarchy and shows that the approximation can be very accurate when the interactions averaged over are slowly varying at characteristic nearest-neighbor distances. Application of LMF theory to Coulomb interactions alone allows for great simplifications of the governing equations. LMF theory then reduces to a single equation for a restructured electrostatic potential that satisfies Poissons equation defined with a smoothed charge density. Because of this charge smoothing by a Gaussian of width sigma, this equation may be solved more simply than the detailed simulation geometry might suggest. Proper choice of the smoothing length sigma plays a major role in ensuring the accuracy of this approximation. We examine the results of a basic confinement of water between corrugated wall and justify the simple LMF equation used in a previous publication. We further generalize these results to confinements that include fixed charges in order to demonstrate the broader impact of charge smoothing by sigma. The slowly-varying part of the restructured electrostatic potential will be more symmetric than the local details of confinements.

Interplay of local hydrogen-bonding and long-ranged dipolar forces in simulations of confined water

Spherical truncations of Coulomb interactions in standard models for water permit efficient molecular simulations and can give remarkably accurate results for the structure of the uniform liquid. However truncations are known to produce significant errors in nonuniform systems, particularly for electrostatic properties. Local molecular field (LMF) theory corrects such truncations by use of an effective or restructured electrostatic potential that accounts for effects of the remaining long-ranged interactions through a density-weighted mean field average and satisfies a modified Poissons equation defined with a Gaussian-smoothed charge density. We apply LMF theory to three simple molecular systems that exhibit different aspects of the failure of a naive application of spherical truncations -- water confined between hydrophobic walls, water confined between atomically-corrugated hydrophilic walls, and water confined between hydrophobic walls with an applied electric field. Spherical truncations of 1/r fail spectacularly for the final system in particular, and LMF theory corrects the failings for all three. Further, LMF theory provides a more intuitive way to understand the balance between local hydrogen bonding and longer-ranged electrostatics in molecular simulations involving water.