Electron transfer, nonadiabatic chemical dynamics

The author would like to thank all the group members in the past and present who carried out all the researches discussed in this chapter Drs. C. Zhu, G. V. Mil nikov, Y. Teranishi, K. Nagaya, A. Kondorskiy, H. Fujisaki, S. Zou, H. Tamura, and P. Oloyede. He is indebted to Professors S. Nanbu and T. Ishida for their contributions, especially on molecular functions and electronic structure calculations. He also thanks Professor Y. Zhao for his work on the nonadiabatic transition state theory and electron transfer. The work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Specially Promoted Research on Studies of Nonadiabatic Chemical Dynamics based on the Zhu-Nakamura Theory from MEXT of Japan. 

Nonadiabatic dynamics is a quantum phenomenon which occurs in systems that interact sufficiently strongly with their environments to cause a breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Nonadiabatic transitions play significant roles in many chemical processes such as proton and electron transfer events in solution and biological systems, and in the response of molecules to radiation fields and their subsequent relaxation. Since the bath in which the quantum dynamics of interest occurs often consists of relatively heavy molecules, its evolution can be modeled by classical mechanics to a high degree of accuracy. This observation has led to the development of mixed quantum-classical methods for nonadiabatic processes. 

---