Hydrogen bonding definitions and dynamics in liquid water

X-ray and neutron diffractions, vibrational spectroscopy, and x-ray Raman scattering and absorption experiments on water are often interpreted in terms of hydrogen bonding. To this end a number of geometric definitions of hydrogen bonding in water have been developed. While all definitions of hydrogen bonding are to some extent arbitrary, those involving one distance and one angle for a given water dimer are unnecessarily so. In this paper the authors develop a systematic procedure based on two-dimensional potentials of mean force for defining cutoffs for a given pair of distance and angular coordinates. They also develop an electronic structure-based definition of hydrogen bonding in liquid water, related to…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• DO
  Division of Chemistry