Polarization#

Polarization can be treated by GROMACS by attaching shell (Drude) particles to atoms and/or virtual sites. The energy of the shell particle is then minimized at each time step in order to remain on the Born-Oppenheimer surface.

Simple polarization#

This is implemented as a harmonic potential with equilibrium distance 0. The input given in the topology file is the polarizability \(\alpha\) (in GROMACS units) as follows:

[ polarization ]
; Atom i  j  type  alpha
1         2  1     0.001

in this case the polarizability volume is 0.001 nm\(^3\) (or 1 Å\(^3\)). In order to compute the harmonic force constant \(k_{cs}\) (where \(cs\) stands for core-shell), the following is used 45:

(247)#\[k_{cs} ~=~ \frac{q_s^2}{\alpha}\]

where \(q_s\) is the charge on the shell particle.

Anharmonic polarization#

For the development of the Drude force field by Roux and McKerell 93 it was found that some particles can overpolarize and this was fixed by introducing a higher order term in the polarization energy:

(248)#\[\begin{split}\begin{aligned} V_{pol} ~=& \frac{k_{cs}}{2} r_{cs}^2 & r_{cs} \le \delta \\ =& \frac{k_{cs}}{2} r_{cs}^2 + k_{hyp} (r_{cs}-\delta)^4 & r_{cs} > \delta\end{aligned}\end{split}\]

where \(\delta\) is a user-defined constant that is set to 0.02 nm for anions in the Drude force field 94. Since this original introduction it has also been used in other atom types 93.

[ polarization ]
;Atom i j    type   alpha (nm^3)    delta  khyp
1       2       2       0.001786     0.02  16.736e8

The above force constant \(k_{hyp}\) corresponds to 4\(\cdot\)10\(^8\) kcal/mol/nm\(^4\), hence the strange number.

Water polarization#

A special potential for water that allows anisotropic polarization of a single shell particle 45.

Thole polarization#

Based on early work by Thole 95, Roux and coworkers have implemented potentials for molecules like ethanol 96, 98. Within such molecules, there are intra-molecular interactions between shell particles, however these must be screened because full Coulomb would be too strong. The potential between two shell particles \(i\) and \(j\) is:

(249)#\[V_{thole} ~=~ \frac{q_i q_j}{r_{ij}}\left[1-\left(1+\frac{{\bar{r}_{ij}}}{2}\right){\rm exp}^{-{\bar{r}_{ij}}}\right]\]

Note that there is a sign error in Equation 1 of Noskov et al.  98:

(250)#\[{\bar{r}_{ij}}~=~ a\frac{r_{ij}}{(\alpha_i \alpha_j)^{1/6}}\]

where \(a\) is a magic (dimensionless) constant, usually chosen to be 2.6 98; \(\alpha_i\) and \(\alpha_j\) are the polarizabilities of the respective shell particles.