Quasi-classical

A2) In spite of the high individual frequencies, bond length and bond angle vibrations participate in quasi-classical low frequency collective normal modes. Bond angle bending is necessary for the flexibility of five-membered rings, which plays a key role in the polymorphism of nucleic acids. 

Furthermore, one can infer quantitatively from the data in Fig. 13 that the quantum system cannot reach the maximum herringbone ordering even at extremely low temperatures the quantum hbrations depress the saturation value by 10%. In Fig. 13, the order parameter and total energy as obtained from the full quantum simulation are compared with standard approximate theories valid for low and high temperatures. One can clearly see how the quasi classical Feynman-Hibbs curve matches the exact quantum data above 30 K. However, just below the phase transition, this second-order approximation in the quantum fluctuations fails and yields uncontrolled estimates just below the point of failure it gives classical values for the order parameter and the herringbone ordering even vanishes below... 

From a quasi-classical point of view, the Massey parameter (1.7) is a... 

In the high-temperature quasi-classical limit (fico [Pg.63]

The quasi-classical description of the Q-branch becomes valid as soon as its rotational structure is washed out. There is no doubt that at this point its contour is close to a static one, and, consequently, asymmetric to a large extent. It is also established [136] that after narrowing of the contour its shape in the liquid is Lorentzian even in the far wings where the intensity is four orders less than in the centre (see Fig. 3.3). In this case it is more convenient to compare observed contours with calculated ones by their characteristic parameters. These are the half width at half height Aa)i/2 and the shift of the spectrum maximum ftW—< > = 5a>+A, which is usually assumed to be a sum of the rotational shift 5larger scale A determined by vibrational dephasing. 

As the process of rotational relaxation is close to a correlated one (y 1) for both gases, according to (3.74) the aE cross-section is twice as large as oj. This result agrees with experiment and it appears that quasi-classical impact theory may be applied to description of rotational relaxation in moderately dense gases. 

The quasi-classical theory of spectral shape is justified for sufficiently high pressures, when the rotational structure is not resolved. For isotropic Raman spectra the corresponding criterion is given by inequality (3.2). At lower pressures the well-resolved rotational components are related to the quantum number j of quantized angular momentum. At very low pressure each of the components may be considered separately and its broadening is qualitatively the same as of any other isolated line in molecular or atomic spectroscopy. 

Firstly, we are going to demonstrate how branch interference may be taken into account within the quasi-classical impact theory. Then we shall analyse a quasi-static case, when the exchange frequency between branches is relatively small. An alternative case, when exchange is intensive and the spectrum collapses, has been already considered in Chapter 2. Now it will be shown how the quasi-static spectrum narrows with intensification of exchange. The models of weak and strong collisions will be compared with each other and with experimental data. Finally, the mutual agreement of various theoretical approaches to the problem will be considered. 

Let us consider the quasi-classical formulation of impact theory. A rotational spectrum of ifth order at every value of co is a sum of spectral densities at a given frequency of all J-components of all branches... 

We are interested in a quasi-classical expression in the limit of large j, which is the same for all. /-components of one branch ... 

We are interested in the upper left-hand block, whose diagonal and off-diagonal elements govern, respectively, exchange inside and between the O, Q and S branches of the Raman spectrum. Therefore, further on we may consider only 3x3 matrices, meaning that the left-hand upper block does not couple with the right-hand lower one. The quasi-classical expression for the relaxation operator... 

Here Q i = —2Bjdjjr Let us write out again a quasi-classical expression for the rotational time... 

Classical dynamics is studied as a special case by analyzing the Ehrenfest theorem, coherent states (16) and systems with quasi classical dynamics like the rigid rotor for molecules (17) and the oscillator (18) for various particle systems and for EM field in a laser. 

A complete description of the method requires a procedure for selecting the initial conditions. At t 0, initial values for the complex basis set coefficients and the parameters that define the nuclear basis set (position, momentum, and nuclear phase) must be provided. Typically at the beginning of the simulation only one electronic state is populated, and the wavefunction on this state is modeled as a sum over discrete trajectories. The size of initial basis set (N/it = 0)) is clearly important, and this point will be discussed later. Once the initial basis set size is chosen, the parameters of each nuclear basis function must be chosen. In most of our calculations, these parameters were drawn randomly from the appropriate Wigner distribution [65], but the earliest work used a quasi-classical procedure [39,66,67], At this point, the complex amplitudes are determined by projection of the AIMS wavefunction on the target initial state (T 1)... 

Figure 8. Li + H2 Ground-state population as a function of time for a representative initial basis function (solid line) and the average over 25 (different) initial basis functions sampled (using a quasi-classical Monte Carlo procedure) from the Lit2/j) + H2(v — 0, j — 0) initial state at an impact parameter of 2 bohr. Individual nonadiabatic events for each basis function are completed in less than a femtosecond (solid line) and due to the sloped nature of the conical intersection (see Fig. 7), there is considerable up-funneling (i.e., back-transfer) of population from the ground to the excited electronic state. (Figure adapted from Ref. 140.)...

Consider reorientations of a diatomic surface group BC (see Fig. A2.1) connected to the substrate thermostat. By a reorientation is meant a transition of the atom C from one to another well of the azimuthal potential U(qi) (see Fig. 4.4)). The terminology used implies a classical (or at least quasi-classical) description of azimuthal motion allowing the localization of the atom C in a certain well. A classical particle, with the energy lower than the reorientation barrier Awhich does not interact with the thermostat cannot leave the potential well where it was located initially. The only pathway to reorientations is provided by energy fluctuations of a particle which arise from its contact with the thermostat. Let us estimate the average frequency of reorientations in the framework of this classical approach. 

From the beginning, London s theory was recognized as an expedient, but somewhat arbitrary, device to simplify numerical evaluations and recover quasi-classical interpretations of selected long-range contributions to the total intermolecular interaction in the words of a classic text,25... 

The physical origin of the dispersion interaction is often described in terms of a quasi-classical induced-dipole-induced-dipole picture. The quantum-mechanical fluctuations of the electronic distribution about its spherically symmetric average can be pictured as leading to an instantaneous (snapshot) dipole /za(mst) on monomer a, which in turn induces an instantaneous dipole tb(mst) on b. Thus, if the dipole fluctuations of the two monomers are properly correlated, a net attraction of the form (5.25) results. As remarked by Hirschfelder et al,28... 

That is, the classical DoF propagate according to a mean-field potential, the value of which is weighted by the instantaneous populations of the different quantum states. A MFT calculation thus consists of the self-consistent solution of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation (28) for the quantum DoF and Newton s equation (32) for the classical DoF. To represent the initial state (15) of the molecular system, the electronic DoF dk Q) as well as the nuclear DoF xj Q) and Pj 0) are sampled from a quasi-classical phase-space distribution [23, 24, 26]. 

Employing a correct quasi-classical average, the numerical results obtained above for the Models 1 and 111-Va have clearly demonstrated that the MFT... 

The quasi-classical SH model employs the simple and physically appealing picture in which a molecular system always evolves on a single adiabatic potential-energy surface (PES). When the trajectory reaches an intersection of the electronic PESs, the transition probability pk t to the other PES is calculated... 

The breakdown of the SH scheme in the case of classically forbidden electronic transitions should not come as a surprise, but is a consequence of the rather simplifying assumptions [i.e., Eqs. (37) and (43)] underlying the SH model. On a semiclassical level, classically forbidden transitions may approximately be described within an initial-value representation (see Section VIII) or by introducing complex-valued trajectories [55]. On the quasi-classical... 

To summarize, it has been found that the SH method is able to at least qualitatively describe the complex photoinduced electronic and vibrational relaxation dynamics exhibited by the model problems under consideration. The overall quality of SH calculations is typically somewhat better than the quality of the mean-field trajectory results. In particular, this holds in the case of several curve crossings (see Fig. 2) as well as when the dynamics and the observables of interest are essentially of adiabatic nature— for example, for the calculation of the adiabatic population dynamics associated with a conical intersection (see Figs. 3 and 12). Furthermore, we have briefly discussed various consistency problems of a simple quasi-classical SH description. It has been shown that binned electronic population probabilities and no momentum adjustment for classically forbidden transitions help us to improve this matter. There have been numerous suggestions to further improve the hopping algorithm [70-74] however, the performance of all these variants seems to depend largely on the problem under consideration. 

In addition to the equations of motion, one needs to specify a procedure to evaluate the observables of interest. Within a quasi-classical trajectory approach, the expectation value of an observable A is given by Eq. (16). For example, the expression for the diabatic electronic population probability, which is defined as the expectation value of the electronic occupation operator, reads... 

The mapping approach outlined above has been designed to furnish a well-defined classical limit of nonadiabatic quantum dynamics. The formalism applies in the same way at the quantum-mechanical, semiclassical (see Section VIII), and quasiclassical level, respectively. Most important, no additional assumptions but the standard semiclassical and quasi-classical approximations are needed to get from one level to another. Most of the established mixed quantum-classical methods such as the mean-field-trajectory method or the surface-hopping approach do invoke additional assumptions. The comparison of the mapping approach to these formulations may therefore (i) provide insight into the nature of these additional approximation and (ii) indicate whether the conceptual virtues of the mapping approach may be expected to result in practical advantages. 

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