Despite its apparent simplicity, water displays unique behavior across the phase diagram which is strictly related to the ability of the water molecules to form dense, yet dynamic, hydrogen-bond networks that continually fluctuate in time and space. The competition between different local hydrogen-bonding environments has been hypothesized as a possible origin of the anomalous properties of liquid water. Through a systematic application of the many-body expansion of the total energy, we demonstrate that the local structure of liquid water at room temperature is determined by a delicate balance between two-body and three-body energies, which is further modulated by higher-order many-body effects. Besides providing fundamental insights into the structure of liquid water, this analysis also emphasizes that a correct representation of two-body and three-body energies requires sub-chemical accuracy that is nowadays only achieved by many-body models rigorously derived from the many-body expansion of the total energy, which thus hold great promise for shedding light on the molecular origin of the anomalous behavior of liquid water.
This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2019.