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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Abdullah, Aalim S., Wang, Yingze, Menger, Maximilian F. S. J., Sami, Selim, Head-Gordon, Teresa
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14398
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Table of Contents:
  • Traditional force fields commonly use a combination of bonded torsional terms and empirically scaled non-bonded interactions to capture 1-4 energies and forces of atoms separated by three bonds in a molecule. While this approach can yield accurate torsional energy barriers, it often leads to inaccurate forces and erroneous geometries, and creates an interdependence between dihedral terms and non-bonded interactions, complicating parameterization and reducing transferability. In this paper, we demonstrate that 1-4 interactions can be accurately modeled using only bonded coupling terms, eliminating the need for arbitrarily scaled non-bonded interactions altogether. Furthermore by leveraging the automated parameterization capabilities of the Q-Force toolkit, we efficiently determine the necessary coupling terms without the need for manual adjustment. Our approach is first validated on a range of small molecule systems, encompassing both flexible and rigid structures, and shows a significant improvement in force field accuracy, obtaining sub-kcal/mol mean absolute error for every molecule tested. We further extend the bonded-only model for 1-4 interactions to Amber ff14sb, CHARMM36, and OPLS-AA force fields to reproduce ab initio gas and implicit solvent $ϕ,ψ$ surfaces of alanine dipeptide.