Results from molecular dynamics simulations of aqueous hydroxide of varying
concentrations have been compared with experimental structural data. First, the polarizable
POL3 model was verified against neutron scattering using a Reverse Monte Carlo fitting
procedure. It was found to be competitive with other simple water models and well suited for
combining with hydroxide ions. Second, a set of four polarizable models of OH- were developed
by fitting against accurate ab initio calcuations for small hydroxide-water clusters. All these
models were found to provide results similar to each other, robustly agreeing with structural data
from X-ray scattering. The present force field thus represents a significant improvement over
previously tested non-polarizable potentials. Although it cannot in principle capture proton
hopping and can only approximately describe the charge delocalization within the immediate
solvent shell around OH- it provides structural data which are almost entirely consistent with data
obtained from scattering experiments.