study of nuclear quantum effects on sub- and supercritical water

Thomsen, B.  ; Shiga, Motoyuki   

The structures of water in the ambient, sub-, and supercritical conditions at various densities were studied systematically by path integral molecular dynamics simulations. It was found that the nuclear quantum effects (NQEs) have significant impact on the structure of hydrogen bonds in close contact, not only in the ambient condition but also in the sub-, and supercritical conditions. The NQEs on the structure beyond the hydrogen bond contact are important in ambient water, but not much for water in the sub-, and supercritical conditions. The NQEs are furthermore important for determining the number of hydrogen bonds in the ambient conditions, this role is however diminished in the sub- and supercritical conditions. The NQEs does nevertheless show their importance in determining the intramolecular structure of water and the close contact structures of the hydrogen bonds, even at sub- and supercritical conditions. Using the RPBE-D3 functional, the computed radial distribution functions for the ambient water are in excellent agreement with experimental data, upgrading our previous results using the BLYP-D2 functional [Machida, et al., J. Chem. Phys. 148, 102324 (2018)]. The computed radial distribution functions for water in the sub- and supercritical conditions were carefully compared with experiment. In particular, we found that the first peak in hydrogen pair distribution functions matches only when the NQEs are taken into account.