Quantum and classical molecular dynamics simulations of liquid methane

Abstract

We present a comparative study of classical and ab-initio molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of methane in the liquid state. The atom wise radial distribution function (RDF) of liquid methane for both classical and ab initio simulations is calculated. It is observed that the peaks of RDF are lowered and broadened when quantum effects are considered. Also, the peaks are shifted towards the slightly lower values of intermolecular distance r. The diffusion coefficient from the slope of Mean Square Displacement (MSD) and the partial density of states has also been calculated for Quantum MD. The bond angles of the final configuration obtained after running the simulations show more fluctuations in classical MD as compared to quantum MD simulations.