Bottom-Up Informed and Iteratively Optimized Coarse-Grained Non-Markovian Water Models with Accurate Dynamics

[Image: see text] Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations based on coarse-grained (CG) particle models of molecular liquids generally predict accelerated dynamics and misrepresent the time scales for molecular vibrations and diffusive motions. The parametrization of Generalized Langevin Equation (GLE) thermostats based on the microscopic dynamics of the fine-grained model provides a promising route to address this issue, in conjunction with the conservative interactions of the CG model obtained with standard coarse graining methods, such as iterative Boltzmann inversion, force matching, or relative entropy minimization. We report the application of a recently introduced bottom-up dynamic coarse graining method, based on the Mori–Zwanzig formalism, which provides accurate estimates of isotropic GLE memory kernels for several CG models of liquid water. We demonstrate that, with an additional iterative optimization of the memory kernels (IOMK) for the CG water models based on a practical iterative optimization technique, the velocity autocorrelation function of liquid water can be represented very accurately within a few iterations. By considering the distinct Van Hove function, we demonstrate that, with the presented methods, an accurate representation of structural relaxation can be achieved. We consider several distinct CG potentials to study how the choice of the CG potential affects the performance of bottom-up informed and iteratively optimized models.