Abstract

The solvation of molecules in water is of paramount importance to various subdisciplines within chemistry and biology in order to understand diverse issues like solubility scales and protein folding. Recently, it has been shown that laser spectroscopy in the THz frequency domain offers new insights into hydration from small solutes to proteins. While ab initio molecular dynamics is a reliable method to compute IR spectra for liquid water and aqueous solutions, a clear understanding of the low frequency range, i.e. the THz domain, is missing, yet it most directly probes the hydrogen bond and solvation dynamics. Here, I will introduce analyses of the theoretical absorption spectra of liquid water mainly in the THz range which draw on distance- and space-decomposed vibrational spectra and densities of states. In addition, some preliminary results on an aqueous glycine solution will also be discussed.