Boundary conditions, long-range corrections, and statistical errors

Boundary conditions, long-range corrections, and statistical errors 

One of the most obvious difficulties arises in both simulation methods from the relatively small system size, always much smaller than the Avogadro number, N, characteristic for a macroscopic system. Therefore, so-called periodic boundary conditions are usually applied to the simulated system in order to minimize surface effects and to simulate more closely its bulk macroscopic properties. This means that the basic simulation box is assumed to be surrounded by identical boxes in all three dimensions infinitely. Thus, if a particle leaves the box through one side, its image enters simultaneously through the opposite side, because of the identity of the boxes. In this way, the problem of surfaces is circumvented at the expense of the introduction of periodicity. 

Interactions between water molecules are far more complicated than those between particles of simple liquids. This complexity displays itself in the ability of H2O molecules to form hydrogen bonds, making water an associated liquid. An additional difficulty in the description of water-water interactions is the existence of substantial non-additive three- and higher-body terms, studied in detail by several authors (Gellatly et al. 1983 dementi 1985 Gil-Adalid 1991 Famulari et al. 1998), which may raise doubts on the applicability of the pair-additivity approximation ordinarily used in computer simulations. 

On the other hand, the analysis of experimental shockwave data for water has shown (Ree 1982) that at the limit of high temperatures and pressures intermolecular interactions of water become simpler. In this case, it becomes even possible to use a spherically-symmetric model potential for the calculations of water properties either from computer simulations (Belonoshko and Saxena 1991, 1992) or from thermodynamic perturbation theory in a way similar to simple liquids (Hansen and McDonald 1986). However, such simplifications exclude the possibility of understanding many important and complex phenomena in aqueous fluids on a true molecular level, which is, actually, the strongest advantage and the main objective of molecular computer simulations. 

The pair potential functions for the description of the intermolecular interactions used in molecular simulations of aqueous systems can be grouped into two broad classes as far as their origin is concerned empirical and quantum mechanical potentials. In the first case, all parameters of a model are adjusted to fit experimental data for water from different sources, and thus necessarily incorporate effects of many-body interactions in some implicit average way. The second class of potentials, obtained from ab initio quantum mechanical calculations, represent purely the pair energy of the water dimer and they do not take into account any many-body effects. However, such potentials can be regarded as the first term in a systematic many-body expansion of the total quantum mechanical potential (dementi 1985 Famulari et al. 1998 Stem et al. 1999). 

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