A justification for a nonadiabatic surface hopping Herman-Kluk semiclassical initial value representation of the time evolution operator

Non-adiabatic Excited-State Molecular Dynamics: Theory and Applications for Modeling Photophysics in Extended Molecular Materials

Optically active molecular materials, such as organic conjugated polymers and biological systems, are characterized by strong coupling between electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom. Typically, simulations must go beyond the Born-Oppenheimer approximation to account for non-adiabatic coupling between excited states. Indeed, non-adiabatic dynamics is commonly associated with exciton dynamics and photophysics involving charge and energy transfer, as well as exciton dissociation and charge recombination. Understanding the photoinduced dynamics in such materials is vital to providing an accurate description of exciton formation, evolution, and decay. This interdisciplinary field has matured significantly over the past decades. Formulation of new theoretical frameworks, development of more efficient and accurate computational algorithms, and evolution of high-performance computer hardware has extended these simulations to very large molecular systems with hundreds of atoms, including numerous studies of organic semiconductors and biomolecules. In this Review, we will describe recent theoretical advances including treatment of electronic decoherence in surface-hopping methods, the role of solvent effects, trivial unavoided crossings, analysis of data based on transition densities, and efficient computational implementations of these numerical methods. We also emphasize newly developed semiclassical approaches, based on the Gaussian approximation, which retain phase and width information to account for significant decoherence and interference effects while maintaining the high efficiency of surface-hopping approaches. The above developments have been employed to successfully describe photophysics in a variety of molecular materials.

Improving the efficiency of Monte Carlo surface hopping calculations

A surface hopping method with a Monte Carlo procedure for deciding whether to hop at each step along the classical trajectories used in the semiclassical calculation is discussed. It is shown for a simple one-dimensional model problem that the numerical efficiency of the method can be improved by averaging over several copies of the sections of each trajectory that span the interaction regions. The use of Sobol sequences in the selection of the initial momentum for the trajectories is also explored. It is found that accurate results can be obtained with relatively small trajectory samples.

Quantum and semiclassical theories for nonadiabatic transitions based on overlap integrals related to fast degrees of freedom

Alternative treatments of quantum and semiclassical theories for nonadiabatic dynamics are presented. These treatments require no derivative couplings and instead are based on overlap integrals between eigenstates corresponding to fast degrees of freedom, such as electronic states. Derived from mathematical transformations of the Schrödinger equation, the theories describe nonlocal characteristics of nonadiabatic transitions. The idea that overlap integrals can be used for nonadiabatic transitions stems from an article by Johnson and Levine [Chem. Phys. Lett. 13, 168 (1972)]. Furthermore, overlap integrals in path-integral form have been recently made available by Schmidt and Tully [J. Chem. Phys. 127, 094103 (2007)] to analyze nonadiabatic effects in thermal equilibrium systems. The present paper expands this idea to dynamic problems presented in path-integral form that involve nonadiabatic semiclassical propagators. Applications to one-dimensional nonadiabatic transitions have provided excellent results, thereby verifying the procedure. In principle these theories that are presented can be applied to multidimensional systems, although numerical costs could be quite expensive.

A singularity free surface hopping expansion for the multistate wave function

A version of a surface hopping wave function for nonadiabatic multistate problems, which is free of turning point singularities, is derived and tested. The primitive semiclassical form of the particular surface hopping method considered has been shown to be highly accurate, even for classically forbidden processes. However, this semiclassical wave function displays the usual singular behavior at turning points and caustics in the classical motion. Numerical data has shown that this somewhat reduces its accuracy when the energy is near the crossing energy of the diabatic electronic surfaces. The singularity free version of this surface hopping wave function is derived by partitioning the x-axis into a large number of small steps for one dimensional problems. The adiabatic electronic energy surfaces are approximated to be linear functions within each step. The matching conditions required by the continuity of the wave function and its derivative at each step boundary provide the needed conditions to obtain the amplitudes for changes in electronic state and/or reflection of the trajectory for the motion of the nuclei. This leads to a form of the surface hopping wave function that is free of turning point singularities. The method is tested for a one dimensional model problem, and it is found to be highly accurate at all energies considered, even when the energy is near the crossing energy.

A semiclassical model for the calculation of nonadiabatic transition probabilities for classically forbidden transitions

A semiclassical surface hopping model is presented for the calculation of nonadiabatic transition probabilities for the case in which the avoided crossing point is in the classically forbidden regions. The exact potentials and coupling are replaced with simple functional forms that are fitted to the values, evaluated at the turning point in the classical motion, of the Born-Oppenheimer potentials, the nonadiabatic coupling, and their first few derivatives. For the one-dimensional model considered, reasonably accurate results for transition probabilities are obtained down to around 10(-10). The possible extension of this model to many dimensional problems is discussed. The fact that the model requires only information at the turning point, a point that the trajectories encounter would be a significant advantage in many dimensional problems over Landau-Zener type models, which require information at the avoided crossing seam, which is in the forbidden region where the trajectories do not go.

Semiclassical nonadiabatic surface-hopping wave function expansion at low energies: hops in the forbidden region

The accuracy of a semiclassical surface-hopping expansion of the time-independent wave function for problems in which the nonadiabatic coupling is peaked in the classically forbidden regions is studied numerically for a one-dimensional curve-crossing problem. This surface-hopping expansion has recently been shown to satisfy the Schrodinger equation to all orders in h and all orders in the nonadiabatic coupling. It has also been found to provide very accurate transition probabilities for problems in which the crossing points of the diabatic energy surfaces are classically allowed. In the numerical study reported here, transition probabilities are evaluated for energies well below the crossing point energy. It is found that the expansion provides accurate results for transition probabilities as small as 10(-11).

On the properties of a primitive semiclassical surface hopping propagator for nonadiabatic quantum dynamics

A previously developed nonadiabatic semiclassical surface hopping propagator [M. F. Herman J. Chem. Phys. 103, 8081 (1995)] is further studied. The propagator has been shown to satisfy the time-dependent Schrodinger equation (TDSE) through order h, and the O(h2) terms are treated as small errors, consistent with standard semiclassical analysis. Energy is conserved at each hopping point and the change in momentum accompanying each hop is parallel to the direction of the nonadiabatic coupling vector resulting in both transmission and reflection types of hops. Quantum mechanical analysis and numerical calculations presented in this paper show that the h2 terms involving the interstate coupling functions have significant effects on the quantum transition probabilities. Motivated by these data, the h2 terms are analyzed for the nonadiabatic semiclassical propagator. It is shown that the propagator can satisfy the TDSE for multidimensional systems by including another type of nonclassical trajectories that reflect on the same surfaces. This h2 analysis gives three conditions for these three types of trajectories so that their coefficients are uniquely determined. Besides the nonadiabatic semiclassical propagator, a numerically useful quantum propagator in the adiabatic representation is developed to describe nonadiabatic transitions.