Generalized bond polarizability model for more accurate atomistic modeling of Raman spectra

Raman spectroscopy is an important tool for studying molecules, liquids and solids. While Raman spectra can be obtained theoretically from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, this requires the calculation of electronic polarizability along the simulation trajectory. First-principles calculations of electronic polarizability are computationally expensive, motivating the development of atomistic models for the evaluation of the changes in the electronic polarizability with the changes in the atomic coordinates of the system. The bond polarizability model (BPM) is one of the oldest and simplest such atomistic models but cannot reproduce the effects of angular vibrations, leading to inaccurate modeling of Raman spectra. Here, we demonstrate that the generalization of BPM through the inclusion of terms for atom pairs that are traditionally considered to be not involved in bonding dramatically improves the accuracy of polarizability modeling and Raman spectra calculations. The generalized BPM (GBPM) reproduces the ab initio polarizability and Raman spectra for a range of tested molecules (SO2, H2S, H2O, NH3, CH4, CH3OH, and CH3CH2OH) with high accuracy and also shows significantly improved agreement with ab initio results for the more complex ferroelectric BaTiO3 systems. For liquid water, the anisotropic Raman spectrum derived from atomistic MD simulations using the GBPM evaluation of polarizability shows significantly improved agreement with the experimental spectrum compared to the spectrum derived using the BPM. Thus, the GBPM can be used for the modeling of Raman spectra using large-scale molecular dynamics and provides a good basis for the further development of atomistic polarizability models.