Numerous studies have identified large quantum mechanical effects in the dynamics of liquid water. In this paper, we suggest that these effects may have been overestimated due to the use of rigid water models and flexible models in which the intramolecular interactions were described using simple harmonic functions. To demonstrate this, we introduce a new simple point charge model for liquid water, q-TIP4P/F, in which the O-H stretches are described by Morse-type functions.We have parameterized this model to give the correct liquid structure, diffusion coefficient, and infra-red absorption frequencies in quantum (path integral-based) simulations. The model also reproduces the experimental temperature-variation of the liquid density and affords reasonable agreement with the experimental melting temperature of hexagonal ice at atmospheric pressure.By comparing classical and quantum simulations of the liquid, we find that quantum mechanical fluctuations increase the rates of translational diffusion and orientational relaxation in our model by a factor of around 1.15. This effect is much smaller than that observed in all previous simulations of simple empirical water models, which have found a quantum effect of at least 1.4 regardless of the quantum simulation method or the water model employed. The small quantum effect in our model is a result of two competing phenomena. Intermolecular zero point energy and tunneling effects destabilize the hydrogen bonding network, leading to a less viscous liquid with a larger diffusion coefficient. However this is offset by intramolecular zero point motion, which changes the average water monomer geometry resulting in a larger dipole moment, stronger intermolecular interactions, and slower diffusion. We end by suggesting, on the basis of simulations of other potential energy models, that the small quantum effect we find in the diffusion coefficient is associated with the ability of our model to produce a single broad O-H stretching band in the infra-red absorption spectrum.

This article reviews the ring-polymer molecular dynamics model for condensed-phase quantum dynamics. This model, which involves classical evolution in an extended ring-polymer phase space, provides a practical approach to approximating the effects of quantum fluctuations on the dynamics of condensed-phase systems. The review covers the theory, implementation, applications, and limitations of the approximation.

We explore the ultrafast photoprotective properties of a series of sinapic acid derivatives in a range of solvents, utilizing femtosecond transient electronic absorption spectroscopy. We find that a primary relaxation mechanism displayed by the plant sunscreen sinapoyl malate and other related molecular species may be understood as a multistep process involving internal conversion of the initially photoexcited 1(1)ππ* state along a trans-cis photoisomerization coordinate, leading to the repopulation of the original trans ground-state isomer or the formation of a stable cis isomer.

The ring polymer molecular dynamics (RPMD) and partially adiabatic centroid molecular dynamics (PA-CMD) methods are compared and contrasted in an application to the infrared absorption spectrum of a recently parametrized flexible, polarizable, Thole-type potential energy model for liquid water. Both methods predict very similar spectra in the low-frequency librational and intramolecular bending region at wavenumbers below 2500 cm(-1). However, the RPMD spectrum is contaminated in the high-frequency O-H stretching region by contributions from the internal vibrational modes of the ring polymer. This problem is avoided in the PA-CMD method, which adjusts the elements of the Parrinello-Rahman mass matrix so as to shift the frequencies of these vibrational modes beyond the spectral range of interest. PA-CMD does not require any more computational effort than RPMD and it is clearly the better of the two methods for simulating vibrational spectra.