Capturing Many-Body Interactions with Classical Dipole Induction Models

The
nonadditive many-body interactions are significant for structural
and thermodynamic properties of condensed phase systems. In this work
we examined the many-body interaction energy of a large number of
common organic/biochemical molecular clusters, which consist of 18
chemical species and cover nine common organic elements, using the
Møller–Plesset perturbation theory to the second order
(MP2) [Møller et al. Phys. Rev. 1934, 46, 618.]. We evaluated the capability of Thole-based
dipole induction models to capture the many-body interaction energy.
Three models were compared: the original model and parameters used
by the AMOEBA force field, a variation of this original model where
the damping parameters have been reoptimized to MP2 data, and a third
model where the damping function form applied to the permanent electric
field is modified. Overall, we find the simple classical atomic dipole
models are able to capture the 3- and 4-body interaction energy across
a wide variety of organic molecules in various intermolecular configurations.
With modified Thole models, it is possible to further improve the
agreement with MP2 results. These models were also tested on systems
containing metal/halogen ions to examine the accuracy and transferability.
This work suggests that the form of damping function applied to the
permanent electrostatic field strongly affects the distance dependence
of polarization energy at short intermolecular separations.