Electrostatic Interactions

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 0 min
Questions
  • How electrostatic interactions are calculated in periodic systems?

Objectives
  • Learn what parameters control the accuracy of electrostatic calculations

Coulomb interactions

graph: electrostatic potential

Particle Mesh Ewald (PME)

Graph: PME Decomposition

Fast decaying short-ranged potential (Particle part).

Slow decaying long-ranged potential (Mesh part).

PME algorithm

Image: PME Grid

  1. Assign charges to grid cells. Charges in grid cells are obtained by interpolation.
  2. Compute Fourier transform.
  3. Compute potential. Coulomb interaction decays rapidly in Fourier space, and summation converges fast.
  4. Compute inverse Fourier transform.
  5. Interpolate gridded potentials back to atomic centers.

Simulation parameters controlling speed and accuracy of PME calculations.


Challenge: Electrostatic interactions

What would you do to improve electrostatic calculations accuracy?

  1. Increase grid spacing
  2. Lower the grid dimensions
  3. Reduce the interpolation order
  4. Make direct space tolerance smaller

Solution

Make direct space tolerance smaller


PME variables

Variable \ MD package GROMACS NAMD AMBER
Fourier grid spacing fourierspacing (1.2) PMEGridSpacing (1.5)  
Grid Dimension [X,Y,Z] fourier-[nx,ny,nz] PMEGridSize[X,Y,Z] nfft[1,2,3]
Direct space tolerance ewald-rtol (\(10^{-5}\)) PMETolerance (\(10^{-5}\)) dsum_tol (\(10^{-6}\))
Interpolation order pme-order (4) PMEInterpOrder (4) order (4)

Key Points

  • Calculation of electrostatic potentials is the most time consuming part of any MD simulation

  • Long-range part of electrostatic interactions is calculated by approximating Coulomb potentials on a grid

  • Denser grid increases accuracy, but significantly slows down simulation