The local structure of water from combining diffraction and X-ray spectroscopy

Abstract

We build a large (~3400 structures) library of X-ray absorption (XAS) and X-ray emission (XES) spectra computed at high level, which together with their associated structures form the basis for a Monte Carlo fit to the experimental oxygen‑oxygen pair-distribution, XAS and XES spectra for ambient liquid water. The procedure results in weights giving the relative importance of each structure to reproduce the experimental properties. We show that the information content in the X-ray spectroscopic data is strongly complementary to that of X-ray diffraction, and dependent on specific structures that are still consistent with the diffraction data. We fit simultaneously to the X-ray spectroscopy and diffraction experimental data and obtain weights on each structure that give a structural distribution that is consistent with the three experimental datasets. These weights are applied to structural parameters characterizing the local environment of each structure and result in the emergence of more preferred values of these parameters.