Dependence of the Many-Body Interaction Strength in Water Clusters (H₂O)_<i>n</i> on the Water-Water Distance

Abstract

The total interaction energies and two-, three-, and four-body interaction energies of water clusters (H 2 O) n (n = 8, 10, 16, 20, 22, 24) are obtained from MP2/aug-cc-pVTZ calculations including the basis set superposition error (BSSE) correction. The calculation results show that the two-body interaction energies contribute more than 70% to the total interaction energy, the three-body interaction energies contribute up to 25%, the four-body interaction energies sometimes contribute up to 3%, and other many-body interaction energies always contribute less than 0.5%. It is also found that about 99.4% of the total interaction energies can be reproduced when some special two-, three-, and four-body interactions are considered. These interactions are the two-body interactions where the distance between two water molecules is less than 0.68 nm, the three-body interactions where the nearest water-water distance among three water molecules is less than 0.31 nm, and the four-body interactions where the nearest water-water distance among four water molecules is less than 0.31 nm. Our investigation results suggest that a reliable method, aimed at modeling biosystems, should possess the ability to correctly simulate these special two-, three-, and four-body interactions.