%A T Sommerfeld %A SD Gardner %A A DeFusco %A KD Jordan %J Journal of Chemical Physics %T Low-lying isomers and finite temperature behavior of (H2O) 6- %X (H2 O) 6- appears as a "magic" number water cluster in (H2 O) n- mass spectra. The structure of the (H2 O) 6- isomer dominating the experimental population has been established only recently [N. I. Hammer, J. Phys. Chem. A 109, 7896 (2005)], and the most noteworthy characteristic of this isomer is the localization of the excess electron in the vicinity of a double-acceptor monomer. In the present work, we use a quantum Drude model to characterize the low-energy isomers and the finite temperature properties of (H2 O) 6-. Comparison with ab initio calculations shows that the use of a water model employing distributed polarizabilities and distributed repulsive sites is necessary to correctly reproduce the energy ordering of the low-lying isomers. Both the simulations and the ab initio calculations predict that there are several isomers of (H2 O) 6- significantly lower in energy than the experimentally observed species, suggesting that the experimental distribution is far from equilibrium. ? 2006 American Institute of Physics. %N 17 %V 125 %D 2006 %R 10.1063/1.2358984 %L pittir16079