Nonadiabatic dynamics

Sun X, Wang H B and Miller W H 1998 Semiclassical theory of electronically nonadiabatic dynamics Results of a linearized approximation to the initial value representation J. Chem. Phys. 109 7064... 

The approximations defining minimal END, that is, direct nonadiabatic dynamics with classical nuclei and quantum electrons described by a single complex determinantal wave function constructed from nonoithogonal spin... 

It is getting more and more important to treat realistic large chemical and even biological systems theoretically by taking into account the quantum mechanical effects, such as nonadiabatic transition, tunneling, and intereference. The simplest method to treat nonadiabatic dynamics is the TSH method introduced... 

One can also ask about the relationship of the FMS method, as opposed to AIMS, with other wavepacket and semiclassical nonadiabatic dynamics methods. We first compare FMS to previous methods in cases where there is no spawning, and then proceed to compare with previous methods for nonadiabatic dynamics. We stress that we have always allowed for spawning in our applications of the method, and indeed the whole point of the FMS method is to address problems where localized nuclear quantum mechanical effects are important. Nevertheless, it is useful to place the method in context by asking how it relates to previous methods in the absence of its adaptive basis set character. There have been many attempts to use Gaussian basis functions in wavepacket dynamics, and we cannot mention all of these. Instead, we limit ourselves to those methods that we feel are most closely related to FMS, with apologies to those that are not included. A nice review that covers some of the... 

Electron nuclear dynamics theory is a direct nonadiabatic dynamics approach to molecular processes and uses an electronic basis of atomic orbitals attached to dynamical centers, whose positions and momenta are dynamical variables. Although computationally intensive, this approach is general and has a systematic hierarchy of approximations when applied in an ab initio fashion. It can also be applied with semiempirical treatment of electronic degrees of freedom [4]. It is important to recognize that the reactants in this approach are not forced to follow a certain reaction path but for a given set of initial conditions the entire system evolves in time in a completely dynamical manner dictated by the interparticle interactions. 

Considering the semiclassical description of nonadiabatic dynamics, only the mapping approach [99, 100] and the equivalent formulation that is obtained by requantizing the classical electron analog model of Meyer and Miller [112] appear to be amenable to a numerical treatment via an initial-value representation [114, 116, 117, 121, 122]. Other semiclassical formulations such as Pechukas path-integral formulation [45] and the various connection... 

The various aspects of photoinduced nonadiabatic dynamics are reflected by different time-dependent observables. Following a brief introduction of the observables of interest, we discuss how these quantities are evaluated in a mixed quantum-classical simulation. 

In order to discuss various aspects of a mixed quantum-classical treatment of photoinduced nonadiabatic dynamics, we consider five different kinds of molecular models, each representing a specihc challenge for a mixed quantum-classical modeling. Here, we introduce the specifics of these models and discuss the characteristics of their nonadiabatic dynamics. The molecular parameters of the few-mode models (Model I-IV) describing intramolecular nonadiabatic dynamics are collected in Tables I-V. The parameters of Model V describing various aspects of nonadiabatic dynamics in the condensed phase will be given in the text. 

Let us briefly discuss the characteristics of the nonadiabatic dynamics exhibited by this model. Assuming an initial preparation of the S2 state by an ideally short laser pulse. Fig. 1 displays in thick lines the first 500 fs of the quantum-mechanical time evolution of the system. The population probability of the diabatic S2 state shown in Fig. lb exhibits an initial decay on a timescale of 20 fs, followed by quasi-peiiodic recurrences of the population, which are... 

As a last example of a molecular system exhibiting nonadiabatic dynamics caused by a conical intersection, we consider a model that recently has been proposed by Seidner and Domcke to describe ultrafast cis-trans isomerization processes in unsaturated hydrocarbons [172]. Photochemical reactions of this type are known to involve large-amplitode motion on coupled potential-energy surfaces [169], thus representing another stringent test for a mixed quantum-classical description that is complementary to Models 1 and II. A number of theoretical investigations, including quantum wave-packet studies [163, 164, 172], time-resolved pump-probe spectra [164, 181], and various mixed... 

In the MQC mean-field trajectory scheme introduced above, all nuclear DoF are treated classically while a quantum mechanical description is retained only for the electronic DoF. This separation is used in most implementations of the mean-field trajectory method for electronically nonadiabatic dynamics. Another possibility to separate classical and quantum DoF is to include (in addition to the electronic DoF) some of the nuclear degrees of freedom (e.g., high frequency modes) into the quantum part of the calculation. This way, typically, an improved approximation of the overall dynamics can be obtained—albeit at a higher numerical cost. This idea is the basis of the recently proposed self-consistent hybrid method [201, 202], where the separation between classical and quantum DoF is systematically varied to improve the result for the overall quantum dynamics. For systems in the condensed phase with many nuclear DoF and a relatively smooth distribution of the electronic-vibrational coupling strength (e.g.. Model V), the separation between classical and quanmm can, in fact, be optimized to obtain numerically converged results for the overall quantum dynamics [202, 203]. 

Finally, we consider the performance of the MFT method for nonadiabatic dynamics induced by avoided crossings of the respective potential energy surfaces. We start with the discussion of the one-mode model. Model IVa, describing ultrafast intramolecular electron transfer. The comparison of the MFT method (dashed line) with the quantum-mechanical results (full line) shown in Fig. 5 demonstrates that the MFT method gives a rather good description of the short-time dynamics (up to 50 fs) for this model. For longer times, however, the dynamics is reproduced only qualitatively. Also shown is the time evolution of the diabatic electronic coherence which, too, is... 

To summarize, the results presented for five representative examples of nonadiabatic dynamics demonstrate the ability of the MFT method to account for a qualitative description of the dynamics in case of processes involving two electronic states. The origin of the problems to describe the correct long-time relaxation dynamics as well as multi-state processes will be discussed in more detail in Section VI. Despite these problems, it is surprising how this simplest MQC method can describe complex nonadiabatic dynamics. Other related approximate methods such as the quantum-mechanical TDSCF approximation have been found to completely fail to account for the long-time behavior of the electronic dynamics (see Fig. 10). This is because the standard Hartree ansatz in the TDSCF approach neglects all correlations between the dynamical DoF, whereas the ensemble average performed in the MFT treatment accounts for the static correlation of the problem. 

To give an impression of the virtues and shortcomings of the QCL approach and to study the performance of the method when applied to nonadiabatic dynamics, in the following we briefly introduce the QCL working equation in the adiabatic representation, describe a recently proposed stochastic trajectory implementation of the resulting QCL equation [42], and apply this numerical scheme to Model 1 and Model IVa. 

Finally, we discuss applications of the ZPE-corrected mapping formalism to nonadiabatic dynamics induced by avoided crossings of potential energy surfaces. Figure 27 shows the diabatic and adiabatic electronic population for Model IVb, describing ultrafast intramolecular electron transfer. As for the models discussed above, it is seen that the MFT result (y = 0) underestimates the relaxation of the electronic population while the full mapping result (y = 1) predicts a too-small population at longer times. In contrast to the models... 

Let us investigate to what extent this simple classical approximation is able to describe the nonadiabatic dynamics exhibited by our model. To this end, we consider the diabatic electronic population probability defined in... 

All approaches for the description of nonadiabatic dynamics discussed so far have used the simple quasi-classical approximation (16) to describe the dynamics of the nuclear degrees of freedom. As a consequence, these methods are in general not able to account for processes or observables for which quantum effects of the nuclear degrees of freedom are important. Such processes include nuclear tunneling, interference effects in wave-packet dynamics, and the conservation of zero-point energy. In contrast to quasi-classical approximations, semiclassical methods take into account the phase exp iSi/h) of a classical trajectory and are therefore capable—at least in principle—of describing quantum effects. 

Following a brief introduction of the basic concepts of semiclassical dynamics, in particular of the semiclassical propagator and its initial value representation, we discuss in this section the application of the semiclassical mapping approach to nonadiabatic dynamics. Based on numerical results for the... 

In contrast to the quasi-classical approaches discussed in the previous chapters of this review, Eq. (114) represents a description of nonadiabatic dynamics which is semiclassically exact in the sense that it requires only the basic semiclassical Van Vleck-Gutzwiller approximation [3] to the quantum propagator. Therefore, it allows the description of electronic and nuclear quantum effects. 

Another ambiguity in defining the classical mapping Hamiltonian is related to the fact that different bosonic quantum Hamiltonians may correspond to the same original quantum Hamiltonian H. This problem was already discussed in Section VI.A.2 for A-level systems. In the context of nonadiabatic dynamics, a different version of the mapping Hamiltonian is given by... 

---