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Updated: Feb 6, 2026

Analyzing Melts and Fluids from Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Simulations with the UMD Package
Published on: September 17, 2021
On the importance of accounting for nuclear quantum effects in ab initio calibrated force fields in biological
Leonid Pereyaslavets1, Igor Kurnikov2, Ganesh Kamath2
1InterX Inc., Berkeley, CA 94710; leonid.pereyaslavets@interxinc.com michael.levitt@stanford.edu.
Abstract:
In many important processes in chemistry, physics, and biology the nuclear degrees of freedom cannot be described using the laws of classical mechanics. At the same time, the vast majority of molecular simulations that employ wide-coverage force fields treat atomic motion classically. In light of the increasing desire for and accelerated development of quantum mechanics (QM)-parameterized interaction models, we reexamine whether the classical treatment is sufficient for a simple but crucial chemical species: alkanes. We show that when using an interaction model or force field in excellent agreement with the "gold standard" QM data, even very basic simulated properties of liquid alkanes, such as densities and heats of vaporization, deviate significantly from experimental values. Inclusion of nuclear quantum effects via techniques that treat nuclear degrees of freedom using the laws of classical mechanics brings the simulated properties much closer to reality.
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