Surface-hopping method, nonadiabatic quantum

A detailed description of the nonadiabatic AIMD surface hopping method has been published elsewhere [15, 18, 21, 22] it shall only be summarized briefly here. We have adopted a mixed quantum-classical picture treating the atomic nuclei according to classical mechanics and the electrons quantum-mechanically. In our two-state model, the total electronic wavefunction, l, is represented as a linear combination of the S0 and 5) adiabatic state functions, < 0 and [Pg.267]

The main practical problem in the implementation of the mixed quantum-classical dynamics method described in Section 4.2.4 is the nonlocal nature of the force in the equation of motion for the stationary-phase trajectories (Equation 4.29). Surface hopping methods provide an approximate, intuitive, stochastic alternative approach that uses the average dynamics of swarm of trajectories over the coupled surfaces to approximate the behavior of the nonlocal stationary-phase trajectory. The siu--face hopping method of Tully and Preston and Tully describes nonadiabatic dynamics even for systems with many particles. Commonly, the nuclei are treated classically, but it is important to consider a large niunber of trajectories in order to sample the quantum probability distribution in the phase space and, if necessary, a statistical distribution over states. In each of the many independent trajectories, the system evolves from the initial configuration for the time necessary for the description of the event of interest. The integration of a trajec-... 

PESs, and (iv) obey the principle of microreversibility. Section 3 describes in some detail the mean-field trajectory method and also discusses its connection to time-dependent self-consistent-field schemes. The surface-hopping method is considered in Sec. 4, which discusses various motivations of the ansatz as well as several variants of the implementation. Section 5 gives a brief account on the quantum-classical Liouville description and considers the possibility of an exact stochastic realization of its equation of motion. The mapping formalism, its relation to other formulations, and its quasi-classical implementation is introduced in Sec. 6. Section 7 is concerned with the semiclassical description of nonadiabatic quantum mechanics. Section 8 summarizes our results and concludes with some general remarks. 

Surface Hopping Model (SHM) first proposed by Tully and Preston [444] is a practical method to cope with nonadiabatic transition. It is actually not a theory but an intuitive prescription to take account of quantum coherent jump by replacing with a classical hop from one potential energy surface to another with a transition probability that is borrowed from other theories of semiclassical (or full quantum mechanical) nonadiabatic transitions state theory such as Zhu-Nakamura method. The fewest switch surface hopping method [445] and the theory of natural decay of mixing [197, 452, 509, 515] are among the most advanced methodologies so far proposed to practically resolve the critical difficulty of SET and the primitive version of SHM. 

The plateau value of the time-dependent rate coefficient k t) = kAB t) + kBA t), which is the sum of the forward and reverse rate constants, determines the overall chemical relaxation time, tchem = for the proton transfer. The nonadiabatic time-dependent rate coefficient k t) is shown in Figure 10.2. The rate constant extracted from the plateau value of this plot is k = 0.163 ps Up to six nonadiabatic transitions were required to obtain converged results. An examination of the trajectories in the ensemble revealed that the major nonadiabatic correction to the rate comes from two quantum transitions ground state -> coherent state ground state. This picture of how nonadiabatic transitions influence the reaction rate is quite different from that in standard surface-hopping methods. 

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. 

The surface-hopping trajectories obtained in the adiabatic representation of the QCLE contain nonadiabatic transitions between potential surfaces including both single adiabatic potential surfaces and the mean of two adiabatic surfaces. This picture is qualitatively different from surface-hopping schemes [2,56] which make the ansatz that classical coordinates follow some trajectory, R(t), while the quantum subsystem wave function, expanded in the adiabatic basis, is evolved according to the time dependent Schrodinger equation. The potential surfaces that the classical trajectories evolve along correspond to one of the adiabatic surfaces used in the expansion of the subsystem wavefunction, while the subsystem evolution is carried out coherently and may develop into linear combinations of these states. In such schemes, the environment does not experience the force associated with the true quantum state of the subsystem and decoherence by the environment is not automatically taken into account. Nonetheless, these methods have provided com-... 

As explained in the Introduction, one needs to distinguish the following kinds of surface hopping (SH) methods (i) Semiclassical theories based on a connection ansatz of the WKB wave function, " (ii) stochastic implementations of a given deterministic multistate differential equation, e.g. the quantum-classical Liouville equation, and (iii) quasiclassical models such as the well-known SH schemes of Tully and others. " In this chapter, we focus on the latter type of SH method, which has turned out to be the most popular approach to describe nonadiabatic dynamics at conical intersections. 

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