Handling electrostatic interactions in molecular simulations: A systematic study

Two qualitatively different models with strong long-range electrostatic interactions, Lennard-Jones diatomics with an embedded dipole moment and TIP4P/ 2005 water, are considered in extensive Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations to systematically study the differences in results caused by different treatments of the long-range electrostatic interactions. In addition to the standard Ewald summation and reaction field methods, we consider also two variants of short-range approximations. Both thermodynamic and structural properties, and both homogeneous and inhomogeneous phases are considered. It is shown that the accuracy of the short-range approximations with carefully selected parameters may be sufficient for a number of applications; however, in some cases one can encounter accuracy limits or structural or other artifacts.