Time-dependent systems, quantum mechanics

D.S. Onley A. Kumar, Time dependence in quantum mechanics study of a simple decaying system. Am. J. Phys. 60 (1992) 432. 

Consider time dependence in quantum mechanics, with the experimentally prepared initial state assumed completely specified as the Hilbert space vector 0(O)). That is, the system is initially in a pure state and may be expanded in a linear combination of energy eigenstates xf/j) as... 

The second-order expansion given in eqn (6.96) recovers all of the physical quantities needed to describe a quantum system and determine its properties the charge density p and its gradient vector field Vp define atoms and determine many of their properties in a stationary state the current density determines the system s magnetic properties and the change in p in a time-dependent system and, finally, the stress tensor determines the local and average mechanical properties of the system. Thus, one does not need all the... 

Quantum-Mechanical Description of Time-Dependent Systems 647... 

In time-dependent systems, there is no variational principle on the basis of the total energy for it is not a conserved quantity. There exists, however, a quantity analogous to the energy, the quantum mechanical action... 

A complete set of functions of a given variable has the property that a linear combination of its members can be used to construct any well-behaved function of that variable, even if the target function is not a member of the set. Well-behaved in this context means a function that is finite everywhere in a defined interval and has finite first and second derivatives everywhere in this region. Fourier analysis uses this property of the set of sine and cosine functions (Appendix A.3). In quantum mechanics, wavefunctions of complex systems often are approximated by combinations of the wavefunctions of simpler or ideahzed systems. Wave-functions of time-dependent systems can be described similarly by combining wavefunctions of stationary systems in proportions that vary with time. We ll return to this point in Sects. 2.3.6 and 2.5. 

Up until now, little has been said about time. In classical mechanics, complete knowledge about the system at any time t suffices to predict with absolute certainty the properties of the system at any other time t. The situation is quite different in quantum mechanics, however, as it is not possible to know everything about the system at any time t. Nevertheless, the temporal behavior of a quantum-mechanical system evolves in a well defined way drat depends on the Hamiltonian operator and the wavefiinction T" according to the last postulate... 

I i i(q,01 in configuration space, e.g. as defined by the possible values of the position coordinates q. This motion is given by the time evolution of the wave fiinction i(q,t), defined as die projection ( q r(t)) of the time-dependent quantum state i i(t)) on configuration space. Since the quantum state is a complete description of the system, the wave packet defining the probability density can be viewed as the quantum mechanical counterpart of the classical distribution F(q- i t), p - P t)). The time dependence is obtained by solution of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation... 

The time-dependent Schrddinger equation governs the evolution of a quantum mechanical system from an initial wavepacket. In the case of a semiclassical simulation, this wavepacket must be translated into a set of initial positions and momenta for the pseudoparticles. What the initial wavepacket is depends on the process being studied. This may either be a physically defined situation, such as a molecular beam experiment in which the paiticles are defined in particular quantum states moving relative to one another, or a theoretically defined situation suitable for a mechanistic study of the type what would happen if. .. 

The preferable theoretical tools for the description of dynamical processes in systems of a few atoms are certainly quantum mechanical calculations. There is a large arsenal of powerful, well established methods for quantum mechanical computations of processes such as photoexcitation, photodissociation, inelastic scattering and reactive collisions for systems having, in the present state-of-the-art, up to three or four atoms, typically. " Both time-dependent and time-independent numerically exact algorithms are available for many of the processes, so in cases where potential surfaces of good accuracy are available, excellent quantitative agreement with experiment is generally obtained. In addition to the full quantum-mechanical methods, sophisticated semiclassical approximations have been developed that for many cases are essentially of near-quantitative accuracy and certainly at a level sufficient for the interpretation of most experiments.These methods also are com-... 

In molecular dynamics applications there is a growing interest in mixed quantum-classical models various kinds of which have been proposed in the current literature. We will concentrate on two of these models the adiabatic or time-dependent Born-Oppenheimer (BO) model, [8, 13], and the so-called QCMD model. Both models describe most atoms of the molecular system by the means of classical mechanics but an important, small portion of the system by the means of a wavefunction. In the BO model this wavefunction is adiabatically coupled to the classical motion while the QCMD model consists of a singularly perturbed Schrddinger equation nonlinearly coupled to classical Newtonian equations, 2.2. 

The temporal behavior of molecules, which are quantum mechanical entities, is best described by the quantum mechanical equation of motion, i.e., the time-dependent Schrdd-inger equation. However, because this equation is extremely difficult to solve for large systems, a simpler classical mechanical description is often used to approximate the motion executed by the molecule s heavy atoms. Thus, in most computational studies of biomolecules, it is the classical mechanics Newtonian equation of motion that is being solved rather than the quantum mechanical equation. 

Quantum mechanical effects—tunneling and interference, resonances, and electronic nonadiabaticity— play important roles in many chemical reactions. Rigorous quantum dynamics studies, that is, numerically accurate solutions of either the time-independent or time-dependent Schrodinger equations, provide the most correct and detailed description of a chemical reaction. While hmited to relatively small numbers of atoms by the standards of ordinary chemistry, numerically accurate quantum dynamics provides not only detailed insight into the nature of specific reactions, but benchmark results on which to base more approximate approaches, such as transition state theory and quasiclassical trajectories, which can be applied to larger systems. 

Quantum mechanics is essential for studying enzymatic processes [1-3]. Depending on the specific problem of interest, there are different requirements on the level of theory used and the scale of treatment involved. This ranges from the simplest cluster representation of the active site, modeled by the most accurate quantum chemical methods, to a hybrid description of the biomacromolecular catalyst by quantum mechanics and molecular mechanics (QM/MM) [1], to the full treatment of the entire enzyme-solvent system by a fully quantum-mechanical force field [4-8], In addition, the time-evolution of the macromolecular system can be modeled purely by classical mechanics in molecular dynamicssimulations, whereas the explicit incorporation... 

For conservative systems with time-independent Hamiltonian the density operator may be defined as a function of one or more quantum-mechanical operators A, i.e. g= tp( A). This definition implies that for statistical equilibrium of an ensemble of conservative systems, the density operator depends only on constants of the motion. The most important case is g= [Pg.463]

The solute-solvent system, from the physical point of view, is nothing but a system that can be decomposed in a determined collection of electrons and nuclei. In the many-body representation, in principle, solving the global time-dependent Schrodinger equation with appropriate boundary conditions would yield a complete description for all measurable properties [47], This equation requires a definition of the total Hamiltonian in coordinate representation H(r,X), where r is the position vector operator for all electrons in the sample, and X is the position vector operator of the nuclei. In molecular quantum mechanics, as it is used in this section, H(r,X) is the Coulomb Hamiltonian[46]. The global wave function A(r,X,t) is obtained as a solution of the equation ... 

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