Separable degrees of freedom

There is an inunediate coimection to the collision theory of bimolecular reactions. Introducing internal partition functions excluding the (separable) degrees of freedom for overall translation. 

In a rigid molecule approximation (internal rotation and inversion barriers appreciably exceed kT), one may single out contributions from separate degrees of freedom of the translational, rotational, and vibrational motions to the entropy S and the heat capacity, with anharmonicity of vibrations and some other effects neglected ... 

It often happens that the energy of each quantum state is the sum of contributions due to different degrees of freedom. Consequently (cf. 2.2.3) the partition function of the system can be expressed as a product of factors related to the separate degrees of freedom. 

For simplicity, we ignore the interaction between these separate degrees of freedom. For example, at low temperatures, the rotational... 

Figure 4.9 shows a plot of Eq. (4.12). As the purge fraction a is increased, the flow rate of purge increases, but the concentration of methane in the purge and recycle decreases. This variation (along with reactor conversion) is an important degree of freedom in the optimization of reaction and separation systems, as we shall see later. 

One common approximation is to separate the nuclear and electronic degrees of freedom. Since the nuclei are considerably more massive than the electrons, it can be assumed that the electrons will respond mstantaneously to the nuclear coordinates. This approximation is called the Bom-Oppenlieimer or adiabatic approximation. It allows one to treat the nuclear coordinates as classical parameters. For most condensed matter systems, this assumption is highly accurate [11, 12]. 

Although in principle the microscopic Hamiltonian contains the infonnation necessary to describe the phase separation kinetics, in practice the large number of degrees of freedom in the system makes it necessary to construct a reduced description. Generally, a subset of slowly varying macrovariables, such as the hydrodynamic modes, is a usefiil starting point. The equation of motion of the macrovariables can, in principle, be derived from the microscopic... 

For very fast reactions, as they are accessible to investigation by pico- and femtosecond laser spectroscopy, the separation of time scales into slow motion along the reaction path and fast relaxation of other degrees of freedom in most cases is no longer possible and it is necessary to consider dynamical models, which are not the topic of this section. But often the temperature, solvent or pressure dependence of reaction rate... 

A quantum mechanical treatment of molecular systems usually starts with the Bom-Oppenlieimer approximation, i.e., the separation of the electronic and nuclear degrees of freedom. This is a very good approximation for well separated electronic states. The expectation value of the total energy in this case is a fiinction of the nuclear coordinates and the parameters in the electronic wavefunction, e.g., orbital coefficients. The wavefiinction parameters are most often detennined by tire variation theorem the electronic energy is made stationary (in the most important ground-state case it is minimized) with respect to them. The... 

In the strictest meaning, the total wave function cannot be separated since there are many kinds of interactions between the nuclear and electronic degrees of freedom (see later). However, for practical purposes, one can separate the total wave function partially or completely, depending on considerations relative to the magnitude of the various interactions. Owing to the uniformity and isotropy of space, the translational and rotational degrees of freedom of an isolated molecule can be described by cyclic coordinates, and can in principle be separated. Note that the separation of the rotational degrees of freedom is not trivial [37]. 

The first requirement is the definition of a low-dimensional space of reaction coordinates that still captures the essential dynamics of the processes we consider. Motions in the perpendicular null space should have irrelevant detail and equilibrate fast, preferably on a time scale that is separated from the time scale of the essential motions. Motions in the two spaces are separated much like is done in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. The average influence of the fast motions on the essential degrees of freedom must be taken into account this concerns (i) correlations with positions expressed in a potential of mean force, (ii) correlations with velocities expressed in frictional terms, and iit) an uncorrelated remainder that can be modeled by stochastic terms. Of course, this scheme is the general idea behind the well-known Langevin and Brownian dynamics. 

With the above definitions, there is no additional overall phase factor to be included in (27). Eqs. (24)-(27) are the CSP approximation.Like TDSCF, CSP is a separable approximation, using a time-dependent mean potential for each degree of freedom. However, the effective potentials in CSP... 

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