Potential energy surface nonadiabatic methods

The full dynamical treatment of electrons and nuclei together in a laboratory system of coordinates is computationally intensive and difficult. However, the availability of multiprocessor computers and detailed attention to the development of efficient software, such as ENDyne, which can be maintained and debugged continually when new features are added, make END a viable alternative among methods for the study of molecular processes. Eurthemiore, when the application of END is compared to the total effort of accurate determination of relevant potential energy surfaces and nonadiabatic coupling terms, faithful analytical fitting and interpolation of the common pointwise representation of surfaces and coupling terms, and the solution of the coupled dynamical equations in a suitable internal coordinates, the computational effort of END is competitive. 

In Chapter VI, Ohm and Deumens present their electron nuclear dynamics (END) time-dependent, nonadiabatic, theoretical, and computational approach to the study of molecular processes. This approach stresses the analysis of such processes in terms of dynamical, time-evolving states rather than stationary molecular states. Thus, rovibrational and scattering states are reduced to less prominent roles as is the case in most modem wavepacket treatments of molecular reaction dynamics. Unlike most theoretical methods, END also relegates electronic stationary states, potential energy surfaces, adiabatic and diabatic descriptions, and nonadiabatic coupling terms to the background in favor of a dynamic, time-evolving description of all electrons. 

The method is composed of the following algorithms (1) transition position is detected along each classical trajectory, (2) direction of transition is determined there and the ID cut of the potential energy surfaces is made along that direction, (3) judgment is made whether the transition is LZ type or nonadiabatic tunneling type, and (4) the transition probability is calculated by the appropriate ZN formula. The transition position can be simply found by... 

We note at this point that the nonadiabatic-transition state method used here (6,19,77) is not expected to be able to give quantitative agreement with experimental rate constants. There are too many factors that are treated approximately (or not at all) in this theory for such performance to be possible. One of the key difficulties is that calculated rate constants are very sensitive to the accuracy of the potential energy surface at room temperature, an error of lkcalmol-1 on the relative energy of the MECP relative to reactants will equate, roughly speaking, to an error by a factor of five on the calculated rate constant. Even though we... 

Nonadiabatic ab initio molecular dynamics methods are one of the few promising strategies to explore excited-state potential-energy surfaces of multidimensional system in an unbiased manner. 

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... 

Recent advances in experimental techniques, particularly photoionization methods, have made it relatively easy to prepare reactant ions in well-defined states of internal excitation (electronic, vibrational, and even rotational). This has made possible extensive studies of the effects of internal energy on the cross sections of ion-neutral interactions, which have contributed significantly to our understanding of the general areas of reaction kinetics and dynamics. Other important theoretical implications derive from investigations of the role of internally excited states in ion-neutral processes, such as the effect of electronically excited states in nonadiabatic transitions between two potential-energy surfaces for the simplest ion-molecule interaction, H+(H2,H)H2+, which has been discussed by Preston and Tully.2 This role has no counterpart in analogous neutral-neutral interactions. 

C. Woywod, W. Domcke, A. L. Sobolewski, and H-J Werner, Characterization of the 5,-5 conical intersection in pyrazine using ab initio multiconfiguration self-consistent-field and multireference configuration-interaction methods, J. Chem. Phys. 100 1400 (1994) G Stock and W. Domcke, Femtosecond spectroscopy of ultrafast nonadiabatic excited-state dynamics on the basis of ab initio potential-energy surfaces the S2 state of pyrazine, J. Phys. Chem. 97 12466 (1993). 

The calculation includes three diabatic potential energy surfaces obtained using the diatomic in molecules (DIM) method (36). Using this 2D quantum treatment in hyperspher-ical coordinates the nonadiabatic problem can be solved also for problems involving more than three diabatic surfaces. 

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