Toward chemical accuracy in the description of ion-water interactions through many-body representations. Alkali-water dimer potential energy surfaces.

This study presents the extension of the MB-nrg (Many-Body energy) theoretical/computational framework of transferable potential energy functions (PEFs) for molecular simulations of alkali metal ion-water systems. The MB-nrg PEFs are built upon the many-body expansion of the total energy and include the explicit treatment of one-body, two-body, and three-body interactions, with all higher-order contributions described by classical induction. This study focuses on the MB-nrg two-body terms describing the full-dimensional potential energy surfaces of the M+(H2O) dimers, where M+ = Li+, Na+, K+, Rb+, and Cs+. The MB-nrg PEFs are derived entirely from "first principles" calculations carried out at the explicitly correlated coupled-cluster level including single, double, and perturbative triple excitations [CCSD(T)-F12b] for Li+ and Na+ and at the CCSD(T) level for K+, Rb+, and Cs+. The accuracy of the MB-nrg PEFs is systematically assessed through an extensive analysis of interaction energies, structures, and harmonic frequencies for all five M+(H2O) dimers. In all cases, the MB-nrg PEFs are shown to be superior to both polarizable force fields and ab initio models based on density functional theory. As previously demonstrated for halide-water dimers, the MB-nrg PEFs achieve higher accuracy by correctly describing short-range quantum-mechanical effects associated with electron density overlap as well as long-range electrostatic many-body interactions.