Non-adiabatic effect

There can be subtle but important non-adiabatic effects [14, ll], due to the non-exactness of the separability of the nuclei and electrons. These are treated elsewhere in this Encyclopedia.) The potential fiinction V(R) is detennined by repeatedly solving the quantum mechanical electronic problem at different values of R. Physically, the variation of V(R) is due to the fact that the electronic cloud adjusts to different values of the intemuclear separation in a subtle interplay of mutual particle attractions and repulsions electron-electron repulsions, nuclear-nuclear repulsions and electron-nuclear attractions. 

It should be noted that in the cases where y"j[,q ) > 0, the centroid variable becomes irrelevant to the quantum activated dynamics as defined by (A3.8.Id) and the instanton approach [37] to evaluate based on the steepest descent approximation to the path integral becomes the approach one may take. Alternatively, one may seek a more generalized saddle point coordinate about which to evaluate A3.8.14. This approach has also been used to provide a unified solution for the thennal rate constant in systems influenced by non-adiabatic effects, i.e. to bridge the adiabatic and non-adiabatic (Golden Rule) limits of such reactions. 

In its most fiindamental fonn, quantum molecular dynamics is associated with solving the Sclirodinger equation for molecular motion, whether using a single electronic surface (as in the Bom-Oppenlieimer approximation— section B3.4.2 or with the inclusion of multiple electronic states, which is important when discussing non-adiabatic effects, in which tire electronic state is changed [15,16, YL, 18 and 19]. 

The molecular phase effects are especially important when the system has some type of synnnetry. Nevertheless, the typical treatment of non-adiabatic effects ignores the adiabatic phase, although, as cautioned, this is a problematic step. 

The ultimate approach to simulate non-adiabatic effects is tln-ough the use of a fiill Scln-ddinger wavefunction for both the nuclei and the electrons, using the adiabatic-diabatic transfomiation methods discussed above. The whole machinery of approaches to solving the Scln-ddinger wavefiinction for adiabatic problems can be used, except that the size of the wavefiinction is now essentially doubled (for problems involving two-electronic states, to account for both states). The first application of these methods for molecular dynamical problems was for the charge-transfer system... 

NON-ADIABATIC EFFECTS IN CHEMICAL REACTIONS EXTENDED BORN-OPPENHEIMER EQUATIONS AND ITS APPLICATIONS... 

The non-adiabatic effect on the ground adiabatic state dynamics can as mentioned in the introduction be incorporated either by including a vector potential... 

At this stage, we would like to mention that the model, without the vector potential, is constructed in such a way that it obeys certain selection rules, namely, only the even —> even and the odd —> odd transitions are allowed. Thus any deviation in the results from these selection rules will be interpreted as a symmetry change due to non-adiabatic effects from upper electronic states. 

To add non-adiabatic effects to semiclassical methods, it is necessary to allow the trajectories to sample the different surfaces in a way that simulates the population transfer between electronic states. This sampling is most commonly done by using surface hopping techniques or Ehrenfest dynamics. Recent reviews of these methods are found in [30-32]. Gaussian wavepacket methods have also been extended to include non-adiabatic effects [33,34]. Of particular interest here is the spawning method of Martinez, Ben-Nun, and Levine [35,36], which has been used already in a number of direct dynamics studies. 

A further model Hamiltonian that is tailored for the treatment of non-adiabatic systems is the vibronic coupling (VC) model of Koppel et al. [65]. This provides an analytic expression for PES coupled by non-adiabatic effects, which can be fitted to ab initio calculations using only a few data points. As a result, it is a useful tool in the description of photochemical systems. It is also very useful in the development of dynamics methods, as it provides realistic global surfaces that can be used both for exact quantum wavepacket dynamics and more approximate methods. 

Direct dynamics attempts to break this bottleneck in the study of MD, retaining the accuracy of the full electronic PES without the need for an analytic fit of data. The first studies in this field used semiclassical methods with semiempirical [66,67] or simple Hartree-Fock [68] wave functions to heat the electrons. These first studies used what is called BO dynamics, evaluating the PES at each step from the elech onic wave function obtained by solution of the electronic structure problem. An alternative, the Ehrenfest dynamics method, is to propagate the electronic wave function at the same time as the nuclei. Although early direct dynamics studies using this method [69-71] restricted themselves to adiabatic problems, the method can incorporate non-adiabatic effects directly in the electionic wave function. 

To demonstrate the basic ideas of molecular dynamics calculations, we shall first examine its application to adiabatic systems. The theory of vibronic coupling and non-adiabatic effects will then be discussed to define the sorts of processes in which we are interested. The complications added to dynamics calculations by these effects will then be considered. Some details of the mathematical formalism are included in appendices. Finally, examples will be given of direct dynamics studies that show how well the systems of interest can at present be treated. 

The method will, however, fail badly if the Gaussian form is not a good approximation. For example, looking at the dynamics shown in Figure 2, a problem arises when a barrier causes the wavepacket to bifurcate. Under these circumstances it is necessary to use a superposition of functions. As will be seen later, this is always the case when non-adiabatic effects are present. 

The adiabatic picture developed above, based on the BO approximation, is basic to our understanding of much of chemistry and molecular physics. For example, in spectroscopy the adiabatic picture is one of well-defined spectral bands, one for each electronic state. The smicture of each band is then due to the shape of the molecule and the nuclear motions allowed by the potential surface. This is in general what is seen in absorption and photoelectron spectroscopy. There are, however, occasions when the picture breaks down, and non-adiabatic effects must be included to give a faithful description of a molecular system [160-163]. 

A different example of non-adiabatic effects is found in the absorption spectrum of pyrazine [171,172]. In this spectrum, the, Si state is a weak structured band, whereas the S2 state is an intense broad, fairly featureless band. Importantly, the fluorescence lifetime is seen fo dramatically decrease in fhe energy region of the 82 band. There is thus an efficient nonradiative relaxation path from this state, which results in the broad spectrum. Again, this is due to vibronic coupling between the two states [109,173,174]. 

The simplest way to add a non-adiabatic correction to the classical BO dynamics method outlined above in Section n.B is to use what is known as surface hopping. First introduced on an intuitive basis by Bjerre and Nikitin [200] and Tully and Preston [201], a number of variations have been developed [202-205], and are reviewed in [28,206]. Reference [204] also includes technical details of practical algorithms. These methods all use standard classical trajectories that use the hopping procedure to sample the different states, and so add non-adiabatic effects. A different scheme was introduced by Miller and George [207] which, although based on the same ideas, uses complex coordinates and momenta. 

The picture here is of uncoupled Gaussian functions roaming over the PES, driven by classical mechanics. The coefficients then add the quantum mechanics, building up the nuclear wavepacket from the Gaussian basis set. This makes the treatment of non-adiabatic effects simple, as the coefficients are driven by the Hamiltonian matrices, and these elements couple basis functions on different surfaces, allowing hansfer of population between the states. As a variational principle was used to derive these equations, the coefficients describe the time dependence of the wavepacket as accurately as possible using the given... 

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