Canonical transformations, system-bath

Further reduction of the constrained reaction path model is possible. Here we adopt a system-bath model in which the reaction path coordinate defines the system and all other coordinates constitute the bath. The use of this representation permits the elimination of the bath coordinates, which then increases the efficiency of calculation of the motion along the reaction coordinate. In particular. Miller showed that a canonical transformation of the reaction path Hamiltonian T + V) yields [38]... 

V. Canonical Transformations Reducing the Strength of the System-Bath Coupling... 

V. CANONICAL TRANSFORMATIONS REDUCING THE STRENGTH OF THE SYSTEM-BATH COUPLING... 

Second, canonical transformation methods may be employed to diagonalize the system-bath Hamiltonian partially by a transformation to new ( dressed ) coordinates. Such methods have been in wide use in solid-state physics for some time, and a large repertoire of transformations for different situations has been developed [101]. In the case of a linearly coupled harmonic bath, the natural transformation is to adopt coordinates in which the oscillators are displaced adiabatically as a function of the system coordinates. This approach, known in solid-state physics as the small-polaron transformation [102], has been used widely and successfully in many contexts. In particular, Harris and Silbey demonstrated that many important features of the spin-boson system can be captured analytically using a variationally optimized small-polaron transformation [45-47]. As we show below, the effectiveness of this technique can be broadened considerably when a collective bath coordinate is first included in the system directly. 

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