Water Freezing and Ice Melting

The generalized replica exchange method (gREM) is designed to sample states with coexisting phases and thereby to describe strong first order phase transitions. The isobaric MD version of the gREM is presented and applied to the freezing of liquid water and the melting of hexagonal and cubic ice. It is confirmed that coexisting states are well-sampled. The statistical temperature as a function of enthalpy, T-S(H), is obtained. Hysteresis between freezing and melting is observed and discussed. The entropic analysis of phase transitions is applied and equilibrium transition temperatures, latent heats, and surface tensions are obtained for hexagonal ice <-> liquid and cubic ice <-> liquid with excellent agreement with published values. A new method is given to assign water molecules among various symmetry types. Pathways for water freezing, ultimately leading to hexagonal ice, are found to contain intermediate layered structures built from hexagonal and cubic ice.