Application of the ChIMES Force Field to Nonreactive Molecular Systems: Water at Ambient Conditions

We demonstrate development of the Chebyshev Interaction Model for Efficient Simulation (ChIMES) for molecular systems through application to water under ambient conditions (298 K, 1 g/cm³). These models, which are comprised of linear combinations of Chebyshev polynomials explicitly describing two- and three-body interactions, are largely fit by force matching to Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory (DFT). Protocols for selecting user-specified parameters and inclusion of stress tensor data are investigated, and structural and dynamical property prediction for resulting models is benchmarked against DFT. We show that the present ChIMES force fields yield excellent agreement with DFT without the need for additional terms such as those for Coulomb interactions. Overall, we show that tractable parametrization and subsequent accuracy of the present models make ChIMES an ideal candidate for extension of DFT dynamics to larger system sizes and longer time scales.