NMR chemical shifts as a tool to analyze first principles molecular dynamics simulations in condensed phases: the case of liquid water

We present H-1 NMR chemical shift calculations of liquid water based on first principles molecular dynamics simulations under periodic boundary conditions. We focus on the impact of computational parameters on the structural and spectroscopic data, which is an important question for understanding how sensitive the computed H-1 NMR resonances are upon variation of the simulation setup. In particular, we discuss the influence of the exchange-correlation functional and the size of the basis set, the choice for the fictitious electronic mass and the use of pseudopotentials for the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) calculation on one hand and the underlying Car-Parrinello-type molecular dynamics simulations on the other hand. Our findings show that the direct effect of these parameters on H-1 shifts is not big, whereas the indirect dependence via the structural data is more important. The H-1 NMR chemical shifts clearly reflect the induced structural changes, illustrating once again the sensitivity of H-1 NMR observables on small changes in the local chemical structure of complex hydrogen-bonded liquids. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.