Semiclassical nonadiabatic dynamics based on quantum trajectories for the O(3P,1D) + H2 system

The O(3P,1D) + H2 --> OH + H reaction is studied using trajectory dynamics within the approximate quantum potential approach. Calculations of the wave-packet reaction probabilities are performed for four coupled electronic states for total angular momentum J = 0 using a mixed coordinate/polar representation of the wave function. Semiclassical dynamics is based on a single set of trajectories evolving on an effective potential-energy surface and in the presence of the approximate quantum potential. Population functions associated with each trajectory are computed for each electronic state. The effective surface is a linear combination of the electronic states with the contributions of individual components defined by their time-dependent average populations. The wave-packet reaction probabilities are in good agreement with the quantum-mechanical results. Intersystem crossing is found to have negligible effect on reaction probabilities summed over final electronic states.     

Quantum dynamics of inelastic scattering with a moving grid

The time‐dependent discrete variable representation (TDDVR) of a wave function with grid points defined by the Hermite part of the Gauss–Hermite (G‐H) basis set introduces quantum corrections to classical mechanics. The grid points in this method follow classical trajectory and the approach converges to the exact quantum formulation with sufficient trajectories (TDDVR points) but just with a single grid point; only classical mechanics performs the dynamics. This newly formulated approach (developed for handling time‐dependent molecular quantum dynamics) has been explored to calculate vibrational transitions in the inelastic scattering processes. Traditional quantum mechanical results exhibit an excellent agreement with TDDVR profiles during the entire propagation when enough grid points are included in the quantum‐classical dynamics. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2005     

Theories of reactive scattering

This paper is an overview of the theory of reactive scattering, with emphasis on fully quantum mechanical theories that have been developed to describe simple chemical reactions, especially atom-diatom reactions. We also describe related quasiclassical trajectory applications, and in all of this review the emphasis is on methods and applications concerned with state-resolved reaction dynamics. The review first provides an overview of the development of the theory, including a discussion of computational methods based on coupled channel calculations, variational methods, and wave packet methods. Choices of coordinates, including the use of hyperspherical coordinates are discussed, as are basis set and discrete variational representations. The review also summarizes a number of applications that have been performed, especially the two most comprehensively studied systems, H+H2 and F+H2, along with brief discussions of a large number of other systems, including other hydrogen atom transfer reactions, insertion reactions, electronically nonadiabatic reactions, and reactions involving four or more atoms. For each reaction we describe the method used and important new physical insight extracted from the results.     

Simulation of environmental effects on coherent quantum dynamics in many-body systems

In this paper we describe an application of the trajectory-based semiclassical Liouville method for modeling coherent molecular dynamics on multiple electronic surfaces to the treatment of the evolution and decay of quantum electronic coherence in many-body systems. We consider a model representing the coherent evolution of quantum wave packets on two excited electronic surfaces of a diatomic molecule in the gas phase and in rare gas solvent environments, ranging from small clusters to a cryogenic solid. For the gas phase system, the semiclassical trajectory method is shown to reproduce the evolution of the electronic-nuclear coherence nearly quantitatively. The dynamics of decoherence are then investigated for the solvated systems using the semiclassical approach. It is found that, although solvation in general leads to more rapid and extensive loss of quantum coherence, the details of the coupled system-bath dynamics are important, and in some cases the environment can preserve or even enhance quantum coherence beyond that seen in the isolated system.     

Entangled trajectory molecular dynamics in multidimensional systems: two-dimensional quantum tunneling through the Eckart barrier

In this paper, we extend the entangled trajectory molecular dynamics (ETMD) method to multidimensional systems. The integrodifferential form of the evolution equation for the Wigner function is employed, allowing general potentials not represented as a polynomial to be treated. As the example, the method is applied to a two-dimensional model of scattering from an Eckart barrier. The results of ETMD are in good agreement with quantum hydrodynamics and exact quantum simulations. By comparing the quantum and classical trajectory in phase space, the quantum tunneling phenomenon is interpreted vividly.     

Extended wave packet dynamics; exact solution for collinear atom,diatomic molecule scattering

The semiclassical wave packet dynamics method of Heller is extended to provide a formally exact theory of quantum mechanical motion for multidimensional anharmonic systems by introducing a complete, orthonormal, time-dependent basis of generalized oscillator functions. The exact wavefunction is expressed in terms of this basis and the expansions are shown to develop according to linear, coupled first-order differential equations. Application to collinear inelastic atom-diatomic molecule scattering demonstrates the feasibility and convergence of the new method.     

A statistical quasiclassical trajectory model for atom-diatom insertion reactions

A statistical model based on the quasiclassical trajectory method is presented in this work for atom-diatom insertion reactions. The basic difference between this and the corresponding statistical quantum model (SQM) lies in the fact that trajectories instead of wave functions are propagated in the entrance and exit channels. Other than this the two formulations are entirely similar. In particular, it is shown that conservation of parity can be taken into account in a natural and precise way in the statistical quasiclassical trajectory (SQCT) model. Additionally, the SQCT model complies with the principle of detailed balance and overcomes the problem of the zero point energy in the products. As a test, the model is applied to the H3+ and H+D2 exchange reactions. The excellent agreement between the SQCT and SQM results, especially in the case of the differential cross sections, indicates that the effect of tunneling through the centrifugal barrier is negligible. The effect of ignoring quantum mechanical parity conservation is also investigated.     

Trajectory-based solution of the nonadiabatic quantum dynamics equations: an on-the-fly approach for molecular dynamics simulations

The non-relativistic quantum dynamics of nuclei and electrons is solved within the framework of quantum hydrodynamics using the adiabatic representation of the electronic states. An on-the-fly trajectory-based nonadiabatic molecular dynamics algorithm is derived, which is also able to capture nuclear quantum effects that are missing in the traditional trajectory surface hopping approach based on the independent trajectory approximation. The use of correlated trajectories produces quantum dynamics, which is in principle exact and computationally very efficient. The method is first tested on a series of model potentials and then applied to study the molecular collision of H with H(2) using on-the-fly TDDFT potential energy surfaces and nonadiabatic coupling vectors.     

Characterization of quantum dynamically significant paths of bridge-mediated charge transfer systems

In this article, we examine characteristics of quantum dynamically important paths using the on-the-fly filtered propagator functional path integral method, which evaluates a numerically accurate reduced density matrix by ignoring the vast majority of paths with insignificant contribution to the dynamics of interest. Two five-state charge-transfer systems have been considered, such that each system is governed by a different charge-transfer mechanism. It was found that, for the incoherent hopping transfer, the quantum mechanically important paths mimic classical counterparts that show little deviation between forward and backward path. Therefore, it is desirable to take advantage of a priori knowledge of the important path characteristics; in particular, it is possible to evaluate the accurate dynamics of bridge-mediated long-range charge-transfer systems efficiently in a significantly reduced quantum mechanical trajectory space.     

Hamiltonian matrix and reduced density matrix construction with nonlinear wave functions

An efficient procedure to compute Hamiltonian matrix elements and reduced one- and two-particle density matrices for electronic wave functions using a new graphical-based nonlinear expansion form is presented. This method is based on spin eigenfunctions using the graphical unitary group approach (GUGA), and the wave function is expanded in a basis of product functions (each of which is equivalent to some linear combination of all of the configuration state functions), allowing application to closed- and open-shell systems and to ground and excited electronic states. In general, the effort required to construct an individual Hamiltonian matrix element between two product basis functions H(MN) = M|H|N scales as theta (beta n4) for a wave function expanded in n molecular orbitals. The prefactor beta itself scales between N0 and N2, for N electrons, depending on the complexity of the underlying Shavitt graph. Timings with our initial implementation of this method are very promising. Wave function expansions that are orders of magnitude larger than can be treated with traditional CI methods require only modest effort with our new method.     

Energy conserving approximations to the quantum potential: dynamics with linearized quantum force

Solution of the Schrodinger equation within the de Broglie-Bohm formulation is based on propagation of trajectories in the presence of a nonlocal quantum potential. We present a new strategy for defining approximate quantum potentials within a restricted trial function by performing the optimal fit to the log-derivatives of the wave function density. This procedure results in the energy-conserving dynamics for a closed system. For one particular form of the trial function leading to the linear quantum force, the optimization problem is solved analytically in terms of the first and second moments of the weighted trajectory distribution. This approach gives exact time-evolution of a correlated Gaussian wave function in a locally quadratic potential. The method is computationally cheap in many dimensions, conserves total energy and satisfies the criterion on the average quantum force. Expectation values are readily found by summing over trajectory weights. Efficient extraction of the phase-dependent quantities is discussed. We illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the linear quantum force approximation by examining a one-dimensional scattering problem and by computing the wavepacket reaction probability for the hydrogen exchange reaction and the photodissociation spectrum of ICN in two dimensions.     

Time dependent quantum dynamics study of the O++H2(v=0,j=0)-->OH++H ion-molecule reaction and isotopic variants (D2,HD)

The time dependent real wave packet method using the helicity decoupling approximation was used to calculate the cross section evolution with collision energy (excitation function) of the O++H2(v=0,j=0)-->OH++H reaction and its isotopic variants with D2 and HD, using the best available ab initio analytical potential energy surface. The comparison of the calculated excitation functions with exact quantum results and experimental data showed that the present quantum dynamics approach is a very useful tool for the study of the selected and related systems, in a quite wide collision energy interval (approximately 0.0-1.1 eV), involving a much lower computational cost than the quantum exact methods and without a significant loss of accuracy in the cross sections.     

Electrostatic representations of molecular groups

The treatment of electrostatic interactions between molecular groups is based on quantum mechanical electron density distributions. A general method is suggested using tesseral harmonic multipole expansions and representing each set of point multipoles by a cluster of discrete charges small with respect to atomic dimensions. The procedure is carried out for the amino group with an electron density derived from the wave function of ammonia. We evaluate the optical rotation of two aminopyrrolidones as a test case. Expansions are compared for several approximate wave functions for ammonia.     

Time dependent quantum dynamics study of the Ne + H2+(v=0-4)-->NeH+ + H proton transfer reaction

The Ne + H2+-->NeH+ + H proton transfer reaction was studied using the time dependent real wave packet quantum dynamics method at the helicity decoupling level, considering the H2+ molecular ion in the (v=0-4, j=0) vibrorotational states and a wide collision energy interval. The calculated reaction probabilities and reaction cross sections were in a rather good agreement with reanalyzed previous exact quantum dynamics results, where a much smaller collision energy interval was considered. Also, a quite good agreement with experimental data was found. These results suggested the adequacy of the approach used here to describe this and related systems.