Institute of Fundamental Technological Research

Simulations that couple different molecular models in an adaptive way by changing resolution on the fly allow us to identify the relevant degrees of freedom of a system. This, in turn, leads to a detailed understanding of the essential physics which characterizes a system. While the delicate process of transition from one model to another is well understood for the adaptivity between classical molecular models the same cannot be said for the quantum-classical adaptivity. The main reason for this is the difficulty in describing a continuous transition between two different kinds of physical principles: probabilistic for the quantum and deterministic for the classical. Here we report the basic principles of an algorithm that allows for a continuous and smooth transition by employing the path integral description of atoms.

path integral, classical-quantum coupling, adaptive resolution scheme, polymer ring, quantum structure

Adaptive resolution simulations for classical systems are currently made within a reasonably consistent theoretical framework. Recently we have extended this approach to the quantum-classical coupling by mapping the quantum nature of an atom onto a classical polymer ring representation within the path integral approach [Poma & Delle Site, Phys. Rev. Lett., 2010, 104, 250201]. In this way the process of interfacing adaptively a quantum representation to a classical one corresponds to the problem of interfacing two regions with a different number of effective “classical” degrees of freedom; thus the classical formulation of the adaptive algorithm applies straightforwardly to the quantum-classical problem. In this work we show the robustness of such an approach for a liquid of para-hydrogen at low temperature. This system represents a highly challenging conceptual and technical test for the adaptive approach due to the extreme thermodynamical conditions where quantum effects play a central role.

Adaptive resolution Scheme, parahydrogen, path integral, polymer ring, quantum fluid

We propose a simple method to evaluate the approximation of separation of variables in molecular dynamics (MD) and related fields. It is based on a point-by-point evaluation of the difference between the true potential and the corresponding potential where the separation of variables is applied. The major advantage of such an approach is the fact that it requires only the analytical form of the potential as provided in most of the MD codes. We provide two examples of application, namely, a diatomic molecule adsorbing on a flat surface and an alkane (aliphatic) chain.

Quality control, independent DOF, coarse graining, aliphatic chain, intramolecular