Comment on “A comparison of the efficiency of Fourier- and discrete time-path integral Monte Carlo” [J. Chem. Phys.109, 2123 (1998)]

Comparison of Matsubara dynamics with exact quantum dynamics for an oscillator coupled to a dissipative bath

We report the first numerical calculations in which converged Matsubara dynamics is compared directly with exact quantum dynamics with no artificial damping of the time-correlation functions (TCFs). The system treated is a Morse oscillator coupled to a harmonic bath. We show that, when the system-bath coupling is sufficiently strong, the Matsubara calculations can be converged by explicitly including up to M = 200 Matsubara modes, with the remaining modes included as a harmonic "tail" correction. The resulting Matsubara TCFs are in near-perfect agreement with the exact quantum TCFs, for non-linear as well as linear operators, at a temperature at which the TCFs are dominated by quantum thermal fluctuations. These results provide compelling evidence that incoherent classical dynamics can arise in the condensed phase at temperatures at which the statistics are dominated by quantum (Boltzmann) effects, as a result of smoothing of imaginary-time Feynman paths. The techniques developed here may also lead to efficient methods for benchmarking system-bath dynamics in the overdamped regime.

Quantitative molecular thermochemistry based on path integrals

The calculation of thermochemical data requires accurate molecular energies and heat capacities. Traditional methods rely upon the standard harmonic normal-mode analysis to calculate the vibrational and rotational contributions. We utilize path-integral Monte Carlo for going beyond the harmonic analysis and to calculate the vibrational and rotational contributions to ab initio energies. This is an application and an extension of a method previously developed in our group [J. Chem. Phys. 118, 1596 (2003)].

Path-integral virial estimator based on the scaling of fluctuation coordinates: Application to quantum clusters with fourth-order propagators

We first show that a simple scaling of fluctuation coordinates defined in terms of a given reference point gives the conventional virial estimator in discretized path integral, where different choices of the reference point lead to different forms of the estimator (e.g., centroid virial). The merit of this procedure is that it allows a finite-difference evaluation of the virial estimator with respect to temperature, which totally avoids the need of higher-order potential derivatives. We apply this procedure to energy and heat-capacity calculations of the (H(2))(22) and Ne(13) clusters at low temperature using the fourth-order Takahashi-Imada [J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 53, 3765 (1984)] and Suzuki [Phys. Lett. A 201, 425 (1995)] propagators. This type of calculation requires up to third-order potential derivatives if analytical virial estimators are used, but in practice only first-order derivatives suffice by virtue of the finite-difference scheme above. From the application to quantum clusters, we find that the fourth-order propagators do improve upon the primitive approximation, and that the choice of the reference point plays a vital role in reducing the variance of the virial estimator.

Bead-Fourier path integral molecular dynamics

Molecular dynamics formulation of Bead-Fourier path integral method for simulation of quantum systems at finite temperatures is presented. Within this scheme, both the bead coordinates and Fourier coefficients, defining the path representing the quantum particle, are treated as generalized coordinates with corresponding generalized momenta and masses. Introduction of the Fourier harmonics together with the center-of-mass thermostating scheme is shown to remove the ergodicity problem, known to pose serious difficulties in standard path integral molecular dynamics simulations. The method is tested for quantum harmonic oscillator and hydrogen atom (Coulombic potential). The simulation results are compared with the exact analytical solutions available for both these systems. Convergence of the results with respect to the number of beads and Fourier harmonics is analyzed. It was shown that addition of a few Fourier harmonics already improves the simulation results substantially, even for a relatively small number of beads. The proposed Bead-Fourier path integral molecular dynamics is a reliable and efficient alternative to simulations of quantum systems.