Palascak and Shields 1 claim to have derived accurate experimental values for the hydration free energies of H + , OH -, and H 3 O + . The purpose of this Comment is to alert the community that, in fact, their values are less accurate than the values they are meant to replace. In what follows we show the errors Palascak and Shields made and, by example, give practical advice on how to ensure correct assignment of standard states for reactions with water as a reactant or product in gas and solution phases.Palascak and Shields begin the derivation of hydration free energies of OHand H 3 O + by asserting that the most reliable estimate of the experimental value for hydration of a proton is -264 kcal/mol. 2,3 They use this value as if the reference standard states are 1 M for both gas and aqueous phases, i.e., ∆ s G*(H + ). 4,5 This practice is wrong. Tissander et al. 2 and Tuttle et al. 3 derive the hydration free energy of a proton by correlating ion-water cluster data, referenced to standard gas phase conditions (1 bar, 298 K), with free energies of hydration of the anion-cation pairs that are derived from gas phase reaction energies referenced to the 1-bar standard state and aqueous reactions referenced to 1-m standard state. Therefore, the recommended value (-264 kcal/mol) for the hydration of a proton represents the conventional process with standard states essentially equal to 1 atm for gas and 1 M for solution. To convert from the 1-atm gas phase/1-m solution standard state to the 1-M gas/ 1-M solution standard state, one must subtract 1.9 kcal/mol, 6 such that ∆ s G*(H + ) ) -265.9 kcal/mol. 7,8 Bartels and coworkers 9 have recently reproduced this result to within 0.2 kcal/ mol and derived values for temperatures up to 648 K using the SUPCRT92 software package. 10 Solvation energies of ions based on ∆ s G*(H + ) ) -265.9 kcal/mol have been widely adopted. 11 This benchmark experimental value should not be changed unless/until it is superseded by better measurements. [12][13][14] Accordingly, Palascak's and Shields' determination of ∆ s G*(OH -) is too negative by 1.9 kcal/mol. With this correction, the value is ∆ s G*(OH -) ) -104.5 kcal/mol, which is in good agreement with the value previously determined by Pliego and Riveros. 15 Not converting ∆ s G°(H + ) to number density standard states is just one of the problems with Palascak's and Shields' paper. A more serious problem arises in the derivation by Palascak and Shields of the hydration free energy of H 3 O + . Their value is several kcal/mol less negative than the value previously

Photoinduced concerted electron-proton transfer (EPT), denoted photo-EPT, is important for a wide range of energy conversion processes. Transient absorption and Raman spectroscopy experiments on the hydrogen-bonded p-nitrophenylphenol-t-butylamine complex, solvated in 1,2-dichloroethane, suggested that this complex may undergo photo-EPT. The experiments probed two excited electronic states that were interpreted as an intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) state and an EPT state. Herein mixed quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical nonadiabatic surface hopping dynamics is used to investigate the relaxation pathways following photoexcitation. The potential energy surface is generated on the fly with a semiempirical floating occupation molecular orbital complete active space configuration interaction method for the solute molecule and a molecular mechanical force field for the explicit solvent molecules. The free energy curves along the proton transfer coordinate illustrate that proton transfer is thermodynamically and kinetically favorable on the lower-energy excited state but not on the higher-energy excited state, supporting the characterization of these states as EPT and ICT, respectively. The nonadiabatic dynamics simulations indicate that the population decays from the ICT state to the EPT state in ∼100 fs and from the EPT state to the ground state on the slower time scale of ∼1 ps, qualitatively consistent with the experimental measurements. For ∼54% of the trajectories, the proton transfers from the phenol to the amine in ∼400 fs on the EPT state and then transfers back to the phenol rapidly upon decay to the ground state. Thus, these calculations augment the original interpretation of the experimental data by providing evidence of proton transfer on the EPT state prior to decay to the ground state. The fundamental insights obtained from these simulations are also relevant to other photo-EPT processes.

We report the design, synthesis and testing of a series of novel bisphosphonates, pyridinium-1-yl-hydroxy-bisphosphonates, based on the results of comparative molecular similarity indices analysis and pharmacophore modeling studies of farnesyl diphosphate synthase (FPPS) inhibition, human Vgamma2Vdelta2 T cell activation and bone resorption inhibition. The most potent molecules have high activity against an expressed FPPS from Leishmania major, in Dictyostelium discoideum growth inhibition, in gammadelta T cell activation and in an in vitro bone resorption assay. As such, they represent useful new leads for the discovery of new bone resorption, antiinfective and anticancer drugs.

Nonadiabatic dynamics simulations of photoinduced proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) in a phenol-amine complex in solution were performed. The electronic potential energy surfaces were generated on-the-fly with a hybrid quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical approach that described the solute with a multiconfigurational method in a bath of explicit solvent molecules. The transferring hydrogen nucleus was represented as a quantum mechanical wave function calculated with grid-based methods, and surface hopping trajectories were propagated on the adiabatic electron-proton vibronic surfaces. Following photoexcitation to the excited S1 electronic state, the overall decay to the ground vibronic state was found to be comprised of relatively fast decay from a lower proton vibrational state of S1 to a highly excited proton vibrational state of the ground S0 electronic state, followed by vibrational relaxation within the S0 state. Proton transfer can occur either on the highly excited proton vibrational states of S0 due to small environmental fluctuations that shift the delocalized vibrational wave functions or on the low-energy proton vibrational states of S1 due to solvent reorganization that alters the asymmetry of the proton potential and reduces the proton transfer barrier. The isotope effect arising from replacing the transferring hydrogen with deuterium is predicted to be negligible because hydrogen and deuterium behave similarly in both types of proton transfer processes. Although an isotope effect could be observed for other systems, in general the absence of an isotope effect does not imply the absence of proton transfer in photoinduced PCET systems. This computational approach is applicable to a wide range of other photoinduced PCET processes.

Quantum phase transitions in N-particle systems can be identified and characterized by the movement of the two-particle reduced density matrix (2-RDM) along the boundary of its N-representable convex set as a function of the Hamiltonian parameter controlling the phase transition [G. Gidofalvi and D. A. Mazziotti, Phys. Rev. A 74, 012501 (2006)]. For the one-dimensional transverse Ising model quantum phase transitions as well as their finite-lattice analogs are computed and characterized by the 2-RDM movement with respect to the transverse magnetic field strength g. The definition of a 2-RDM "speed" quantifies the movement of the 2-RDM per unit of g, which reaches its maximum at the critical point of the phase transition. For the infinite lattice the convex set of 2-RDMs and the 2-RDM speed are computed from the exact solution of the 2-RDM in the thermodynamic limit of infinite N [P. Pfeuty, Ann. Phys. 57, 79 (1970)]. For the finite lattices we compute the 2-RDM convex set and its speed by the variational 2-RDM method [D. A. Mazziotti, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 213001 (2004)] in which approximate ground-state 2-RDMs are calculated without N-particle wave functions by using constraints, known as N-representability conditions, to restrict the 2-RDMs to represent quantum system of N fermions. Advantages of the method include: (i) rigorous lower bounds on the ground-state energies, (ii) polynomial scaling of the calculation with N, and (iii) independence of the N-representability conditions from a reference wave function, which enables the modeling of multiple quantum phases. Comparing the 2-RDM convex sets for the finite- and infinite-site lattices reveals that the variational 2-RDM method accurately captures the shape of the convex set and the signature of the phase transition in the 2-RDM movement. From the 2-RDM all one- and two-particle expectation values (or order parameters) of the quantum Ising model can also be computed including the pair correlation function, which decays rapidly around the critical field strength g.

The development of efficient theoretical methods for describing electron transfer (ET) reactions in condensed phases is important for a variety of chemical and biological applications. Previously, dynamical dielectric continuum theory was used to derive Langevin equations for a single collective solvent coordinate describing ET in a polar solvent. In this theory, the parameters are directly related to the physical properties of the system and can be determined from experimental data or explicit molecular dynamics simulations. Herein, we combine these Langevin equations with surface hopping nonadiabatic dynamics methods to calculate the rate constants for thermal ET reactions in polar solvents for a wide range of electronic couplings and reaction free energies. Comparison of explicit and implicit solvent calculations illustrates that the mapping from explicit to implicit solvent models is valid even for solvents exhibiting complex relaxation behavior with multiple relaxation time scales and a short-time inertial response. The rate constants calculated for implicit solvent models with a single solvent relaxation time scale corresponding to water, acetonitrile, and methanol agree well with analytical theories in the Golden rule and solvent-controlled regimes, as well as in the intermediate regime. The implicit solvent models with two relaxation time scales are in qualitative agreement with the analytical theories but quantitatively overestimate the rate constants compared to these theories. Analysis of these simulations elucidates the importance of multiple relaxation time scales and the inertial component of the solvent response, as well as potential shortcomings of the analytical theories based on single time scale solvent relaxation models. This implicit solvent approach will enable the simulation of a wide range of ET reactions via the stochastic dynamics of a single collective solvent coordinate with parameters that are relevant to experimentally accessible systems.

Parametrization of the two-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM) has recently enabled the direct calculation of electronic energies and 2-RDMs at the computational cost of configuration interaction with single and double excitations. While the original Kollmar energy functional yields energies slightly better than those from coupled cluster with single-double excitations, a general family of energy functionals has recently been developed whose energies approach those from coupled cluster with triple excitations [D. A. Mazziotti, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 253002 (2008)]. In this paper we test the parametric 2-RDM method with one of these improved functionals through its application to the conversion of hydrogen peroxide to oxywater. Previous work has predicted the barrier from oxywater to hydrogen peroxide with zero-point energy correction to be 3.3-to-3.9 kcal/mol from coupled cluster with perturbative triple excitations [CCSD(T)] and -2.3 kcal/mol from complete active-space second-order perturbation theory (CASPT2) in augmented polarized triple-zeta basis sets. Using a larger basis set than previously employed for this reaction-an augmented polarized quadruple-zeta basis set (aug-cc-pVQZ)-with extrapolation to the complete basis-set limit, we examined the barrier with two parametric 2-RDM methods and three coupled cluster methods. In the basis-set limit the M parametric 2-RDM method predicts an activation energy of 2.1 kcal/mol while the CCSD(T) barrier becomes 4.2 kcal/mol. The dissociation energy of hydrogen peroxide to hydroxyl radicals is also compared to the activation energy for oxywater formation. We report energies, optimal geometries, dipole moments, and natural occupation numbers. Computed 2-RDMs nearly satisfy necessary N-representability conditions.

Parametrization of the 2-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM) rather than the many-electron wave function yields a new family of electronic-structure methods that are faster and more accurate than traditional coupled electron-pair methods including coupled cluster with single and double excitations. Deriving the parametrization from N-representability conditions generates a 2-RDM that captures significant correlation from triple and higher-order excitations at the cost of double excitations. We apply the parametric 2-RDM method to confirm recent experiments determining the relative thermodynamic populations of the cis-cis and cis-trans isomers of carbonic acid. In 2010 Bernard et al. showed by infrared spectroscopy that the populations of cis-cis and cis-trans isomers have a 10:1 ratio at 210 K. By use of the parametric 2-RDM method, we predict a 8:1 ratio at 210 K. Comparable ab initio methods overestimate the stability of the cis-cis isomer with 24:1 and 21:1 ratios. These 2-RDM-based methods promise to have significant applications throughout chemistry.