On the correspondence between classical and quantum mechanics in macromolecular systems: Too much classical chaos

In a recent study we found the classical dynamics of a polyethylene (PE) chain to exhibit low dimensional chaos at temperatures as low as a few Kelvin. These results strongly suggest that classical molecular dynamic simulations in polymer systems can grossly overestimate vibrational motion, which consequently results in disordered structures. In contrast, quantum mechanical calculations using Internal Coordinate Quantum Monte Carlo (an improved method with an initial conjecture for the correct wave function) indicate that the quantum ground state for a three-dimensional model PE chain is far more rigid than determined from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, even at energies as low as a small fraction of the ground state energy. This result casts uncertainty on the reliability of MD estimates of dynamical or structural quantities relevant to the study of some macromolecular systems.