An assessment of mean-field mixed semiclassical approaches: Equilibrium populations and algorithm stability

How to correct Ehrenfest nonadiabatic dynamics in open quantum systems: Ehrenfest plus random force (E + σ) dynamics

One key challenge in the study of nonadiabatic dynamics in open quantum systems is to balance computational efficiency and accuracy. Although Ehrenfest dynamics (ED) is computationally efficient and well-suited for large complex systems, ED often yields inaccurate results. To address these limitations, we improve the accuracy of the traditional ED by adding a random force (E + σ). In this work, the construction of random forces is considered in Markovian and non-Markovian scenarios, and we ensure the dynamics satisfy the detailed balance in both scenarios. By comparing our E + σ with existing methods such as the electronic friction model and surface hopping, we furthermore validate its reliability. In addition, the E + σ model still retains the high efficiency of ED and does not incur much additional computation. We believe that this method provides an alternative to accurately describe the mixed quantum-classical dynamics in open quantum systems, particularly for large complex systems.

Influence of nonequilibrium vibrational dynamics on spin selectivity in chiral molecular junctions

We explore the role of molecular vibrations in the chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect in the context of charge transport through a molecular nanojunction. We employ a mixed quantum-classical approach that combines Ehrenfest dynamics for molecular vibrations with the hierarchical equations of motion method for the electronic degrees of freedom. This approach treats the molecular vibrations in a nonequilibrium manner, which is crucial for the dynamics of molecular nanojunctions. To explore the effect of vibrational dynamics on spin selectivity, we also introduce a new figure of merit, the displacement polarization, which quantifies the difference in vibrational displacements for opposing lead magnetizations. We analyze the dynamics of single trajectories, investigating how the spin selectivity depends on voltage and electronic-vibrational coupling. Furthermore, we investigate the dynamics and temperature dependence of ensemble-averaged observables. We demonstrate that spin selectivity is correlated in time with the vibrational polarization, indicating that the dynamics of molecular vibrations is the driving force of CISS in this model within the Ehrenfest approach.

Discriminating Clockwise and Counterclockwise Photoisomerization Paths in Achiral Photoswitches by Excited-State Electronic Circular Dichroism

Despite the numerous investigations of photoisomerization reactions from both the computational and experimental points of view, even in complex environments, to date there is no direct demonstration of the direction of rotation of the retinal chromophore, initiating the vision process in several organisms, occurring upon light irradiation. In the literature, many proposals have been formulated to shed light on the details of this process, most of which are extracted from semiclassical simulations. Although high hopes are held in the development of time-resolved X-ray spectroscopy, I argue in this work that simpler but less known techniques can be used to unravel the details of this fascinating photochemical process. In fact, chiroptical spectroscopy would unambiguously prove the direction of the rotatory motion of the chromophore during the photoisomerization process by probing excited state chirality, a piece of information that, so far, has been exclusively extracted from atomistic simulations. I demonstrate this statement by computing the expected chiroptical response along photoisomerization pathways for several models of the retinal chromophores that are found in nature bound to rhodopsins, including nuclear ensemble spectra from semiclassical dynamics simulations, that can be compared with time-resolved experiments.

Nonadiabatic dynamics of molecules interacting with metal surfaces: Extending the hierarchical equations of motion and Langevin dynamics approach to position-dependent metal-molecule couplings

Electronic friction and Langevin dynamics is a popular mixed quantum-classical method for simulating the nonadiabatic dynamics of molecules interacting with metal surfaces, as it can be computationally more efficient than fully quantum approaches. In this work, we extend the theory of electronic friction within the hierarchical equations of motion formalism to models with a position-dependent metal-molecule coupling. We show that the addition of a position-dependent metal-molecule coupling adds new contributions to the electronic friction and other forces, which are highly relevant for many physical processes. Our expressions for the electronic forces within the Langevin equation are valid both in and out of equilibrium and for molecular models containing strong interactions. We demonstrate the approach by applying it to different models of interest.

Seeking a quantum advantage with trapped-ion quantum simulations of condensed-phase chemical dynamics

Simulating the quantum dynamics of molecules in the condensed phase represents a longstanding challenge in chemistry. Trapped-ion quantum systems may serve as a platform for the analog-quantum simulation of chemical dynamics that is beyond the reach of current classical-digital simulation. To identify a 'quantum advantage' for these simulations, performance analysis of both analog-quantum simulation on noisy hardware and classical-digital algorithms is needed. In this Review, we make a comparison between a noisy analog trapped-ion simulator and a few choice classical-digital methods on simulating the dynamics of a model molecular Hamiltonian with linear vibronic coupling. We describe several simple Hamiltonians that are commonly used to model molecular systems, which can be simulated with existing or emerging trapped-ion hardware. These Hamiltonians may serve as stepping stones towards the use of trapped-ion simulators for systems beyond the reach of classical-digital methods. Finally, we identify dynamical regimes in which classical-digital simulations seem to have the weakest performance with respect to analog-quantum simulations. These regimes may provide the lowest hanging fruit to make the most of potential quantum advantages.

Detailed balance in mixed quantum-classical mapping approaches

The violation of detailed balance poses a serious problem for the majority of current quasiclassical methods for simulating nonadiabatic dynamics. In order to analyze the severity of the problem, we predict the long-time limits of the electronic populations according to various quasiclassical mapping approaches by applying arguments from classical ergodic theory. Our analysis confirms that regions of the mapping space that correspond to negative populations, which most mapping approaches introduce in order to go beyond the Ehrenfest approximation, pose the most serious issue for reproducing the correct thermalization behavior. This is because inverted potentials, which arise from negative electronic populations entering the nuclear force, can result in trajectories unphysically accelerating off to infinity. The recently developed mapping approach to surface hopping (MASH) provides a simple way of avoiding inverted potentials while retaining an accurate description of the dynamics. We prove that MASH, unlike any other quasiclassical approach, is guaranteed to describe the exact thermalization behavior of all quantum-classical systems, confirming it as one of the most promising methods for simulating nonadiabatic dynamics in real condensed-phase systems.

Nonadiabatic simulations of photoisomerization and dissociation in ethylene using ab initio classical trajectories

We simulate the nonadiabatic dynamics of photo-induced isomerization and dissociation in ethylene using ab initio classical trajectories in an extended phase space of nuclear and electronic variables. This is achieved by employing the linearized semiclassical initial value representation method for nonadiabatic dynamics, where discrete electronic states are mapped to continuous classical variables using either the Meyer-Miller-Stock-Thoss representation or a more recently introduced spin mapping approach. Trajectory initial conditions are sampled by constraining electronic state variables to a single initial excited state and by drawing nuclear phase space configurations from a Wigner distribution at a finite temperature. An ensemble of classical ab initio trajectories is then generated to compute thermal population correlation functions and analyze the mechanisms of isomerization and dissociation. Our results serve as a demonstration that this parameter-free semiclassical approach is computationally efficient and accurate, identifying mechanistic pathways in agreement with previous theoretical studies and also uncovering dissociation pathways observed experimentally.

A mapping approach to surface hopping

We present a nonadiabatic classical-trajectory approach that offers the best of both worlds between fewest-switches surface hopping (FSSH) and quasiclassical mapping dynamics. This mapping approach to surface hopping (MASH) propagates the nuclei on the active adiabatic potential-energy surface, such as in FSSH. However, unlike in FSSH, transitions between active surfaces are deterministic and occur when the electronic mapping variables evolve between specified regions of the electronic phase space. This guarantees internal consistency between the active surface and the electronic degrees of freedom throughout the dynamics. MASH is rigorously derivable from exact quantum mechanics as a limit of the quantum-classical Liouville equation (QCLE), leading to a unique prescription for momentum rescaling and frustrated hops. Hence, a quantum-jump procedure can, in principle, be used to systematically converge the accuracy of the results to that of the QCLE. This jump procedure also provides a rigorous framework for deriving approximate decoherence corrections similar to those proposed for FSSH. We apply MASH to simulate the nonadiabatic dynamics in various model systems and show that it consistently produces more accurate results than FSSH at a comparable computational cost.

On detailed balance in nonadiabatic dynamics: From spin spheres to equilibrium ellipsoids

Trajectory-based methods that propagate classical nuclei on multiple quantum electronic states are often used to simulate nonadiabatic processes in the condensed phase. A long-standing problem of these methods is their lack of detailed balance, meaning that they do not conserve the equilibrium distribution. In this article, we investigate ideas for restoring detailed balance in mixed quantum-classical systems by tailoring the previously proposed spin-mapping approach to thermal equilibrium. We find that adapting the spin magnitude can recover the correct long-time populations but is insufficient to conserve the full equilibrium distribution. The latter can however be achieved by a more flexible mapping of the spin onto an ellipsoid, which is constructed to fulfill detailed balance for arbitrary potentials. This ellipsoid approach solves the problem of negative populations that has plagued previous mapping approaches and can therefore be applied also to strongly asymmetric and anharmonic systems. Because it conserves the thermal distribution, the method can also exploit efficient sampling schemes used in standard molecular dynamics, which drastically reduces the number of trajectories needed for convergence. The dynamics does however still have mean-field character, as is observed most clearly by evaluating reaction rates in the golden-rule limit. This implies that although the ellipsoid mapping provides a rigorous framework, further work is required to find an accurate classical-trajectory approximation that captures more properties of the true quantum dynamics.

Trajectory Propagation of Symmetrical Quasi-classical Dynamics with Meyer-Miller Mapping Hamiltonian Using Machine Learning

The long short-term memory recurrent neural network (LSTM-RNN) approach is applied to realize the trajectory-based nonadiabatic dynamics within the framework of the symmetrical quasi-classical dynamics method based on the Meyer-Miller mapping Hamiltonian (MM-SQC). After construction, the LSTM-RNN model allows us to propagate the entire trajectory evolutions of all involved degrees of freedoms (DOFs) from initial conditions. The proposed idea is proven to be reliable and accurate in the simulations of the dynamics of several site-exciton electron-phonon coupling models and three Tully's scattering models. It indicates that the LSTM-RNN model perfectly captures the dynamical information on the trajectory evolution in the MM-SQC dynamics. Our work proposes a novel machine learning approach in the simulation of trajectory-based nonadiabatic dynamic of complex systems with a large number of DOFs.

Quasiclassical approaches to the generalized quantum master equation

The formalism of the generalized quantum master equation (GQME) is an effective tool to simultaneously increase the accuracy and the efficiency of quasiclassical trajectory methods in the simulation of nonadiabatic quantum dynamics. The GQME expresses correlation functions in terms of a non-Markovian equation of motion, involving memory kernels that are typically fast-decaying and can therefore be computed by short-time quasiclassical trajectories. In this paper, we study the approximate solution of the GQME, obtained by calculating the kernels with two methods: Ehrenfest mean-field theory and spin-mapping. We test the approaches on a range of spin-boson models with increasing energy bias between the two electronic levels and place a particular focus on the long-time limits of the populations. We find that the accuracy of the predictions of the GQME depends strongly on the specific technique used to calculate the kernels. In particular, spin-mapping outperforms Ehrenfest for all the systems studied. The problem of unphysical negative electronic populations affecting spin-mapping is resolved by coupling the method with the master equation. Conversely, Ehrenfest in conjunction with the GQME can predict negative populations, despite the fact that the populations calculated from direct dynamics are positive definite.

INAQS, a Generic Interface for Nonadiabatic QM/MM Dynamics: Design, Implementation, and Validation for GROMACS/Q-CHEM simulations

The accurate description of large molecular systems in complex environments remains an ongoing challenge for the field of computational chemistry. This problem is even more pronounced for photoinduced processes, as multiple excited electronic states and their corresponding nonadiabatic couplings must be taken into account. Multiscale approaches such as hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) offer a balanced compromise between accuracy and computational burden. Here, we introduce an open-source software package (INAQS) for nonadiabatic QM/MM simulations that bridges the sampling capabilities of the GROMACS MD package and the excited-state infrastructure of the Q-CHEM electronic structure software. The interface is simple and can be adapted easily to other MD codes. The code supports a variety of different trajectory-based molecular dynamics, ranging from Born-Oppenheimer to surface hopping dynamics. To illustrate the power of this combination, we simulate electronic absorption spectra, free-energy surfaces along a reaction coordinate, and the excited-state dynamics of 1,3-cyclohexadiene in solution.

Multi-state harmonic models with globally shared bath for nonadiabatic dynamics in the condensed phase

Model Hamiltonians constructed from quantum chemistry calculations and molecular dynamics simulations are widely used for simulating nonadiabatic dynamics in the condensed phase. The most popular two-state spin-boson model could be built by mapping the all-atom anharmonic Hamiltonian onto a two-level system bilinearly coupled to a harmonic bath using the energy gap time correlation function. However, for more than two states, there lacks a general strategy to construct multi-state harmonic (MSH) models since the energy gaps between different pairs of electronic states are not entirely independent and need to be considered consistently. In this paper, we extend the previously proposed approach for building three-state harmonic models for photoinduced charge transfer to the arbitrary number of electronic states with a globally shared bath and the system-bath couplings are scaled differently according to the reorganization energies between each pair of states. We demonstrate the MSH model construction for an organic photovoltaic carotenoid-porphyrin-C₆₀ molecular triad dissolved in explicit tetrahydrofuran solvent. Nonadiabatic dynamics was simulated using mixed quantum-classical techniques, including the linearized semiclassical and symmetrical quasiclassical dynamics with the mapping Hamiltonians, mean-field Ehrenfest, and mixed quantum-classical Liouville dynamics in two-state, three-state, and four-state harmonic models of the triad system. The MSH models are shown to provide a general and flexible framework for simulating nonadiabatic dynamics in complex systems.

Ab initio symmetric quasi-classical approach to investigate molecular Tully models

We perform on-the-fly non-adiabatic molecular dynamics simulations using the symmetrical quasi-classical (SQC) approach with the recently suggested molecular Tully models: ethylene and fulvene. We attempt to provide benchmarks of the SQC methods using both the square and triangle windowing schemes as well as the recently proposed electronic zero-point-energy correction scheme (the so-called γ correction). We use the quasi-diabatic propagation scheme to directly interface the diabatic SQC methods with adiabatic electronic structure calculations. Our results showcase the drastic improvement of the accuracy by using the trajectory-adjusted γ-corrections, which outperform the widely used trajectory surface hopping method with decoherence corrections. These calculations provide useful and non-trivial tests to systematically investigate the numerical performance of various diabatic quantum dynamics approaches, going beyond simple diabatic model systems that have been used as the major workhorse in the quantum dynamics field. At the same time, these available benchmark studies will also likely foster the development of new quantum dynamics approaches based on these techniques.

Generalized discrete truncated Wigner approximation for nonadiabatic quantum-classical dynamics

Nonadiabatic molecular dynamics occur in a wide range of chemical reactions and femtochemistry experiments involving electronically excited states. These dynamics are hard to treat numerically as the system's complexity increases, and it is thus desirable to have accurate yet affordable methods for their simulation. Here, we introduce a linearized semiclassical method, the generalized discrete truncated Wigner approximation (GDTWA), which is well-established in the context of quantum spin lattice systems, into the arena of chemical nonadiabatic systems. In contrast to traditional continuous mapping approaches, e.g., the Meyer-Miller-Stock-Thoss and the spin mappings, GDTWA samples the electron degrees of freedom in a discrete phase space and thus forbids an unphysical unbounded growth of electronic state populations. The discrete sampling also accounts for an effective reduced but non-vanishing zero-point energy without an explicit parameter, which makes it possible to treat the identity operator and other operators on an equal footing. As numerical benchmarks on two linear vibronic coupling models and Tully's models show, GDTWA has a satisfactory accuracy in a wide parameter regime, independent of whether the dynamics is dominated by relaxation or by coherent interactions. Our results suggest that the method can be very adequate to treat challenging nonadiabatic dynamics problems in chemistry and related fields.

On-the-Fly Symmetrical Quasi-Classical Dynamics with Meyer-Miller Mapping Hamiltonian for the Treatment of Nonadiabatic Dynamics at Conical Intersections

The on-the-fly version of the symmetrical quasi-classical dynamics method based on the Meyer-Miller mapping Hamiltonian (SQC/MM) is implemented to study the nonadiabatic dynamics at conical intersections of polyatomic systems. The current on-the-fly implementation of the SQC/MM method is based on the adiabatic representation and the dressed momentum. To include the zero-point energy (ZPE) correction of the electronic mapping variables, we employ both the γ-adjusted and γ-fixed approaches. Nonadiabatic dynamics of the methaniminium cation (CH₂NH₂⁺) and azomethane are simulated using the on-the-fly SQC/MM method. For CH₂NH₂⁺, both ZPE correction approaches give reasonable and consistent results. However, for azomethane, the γ-adjusted version of the SQC/MM dynamics behaves much better than the γ-fixed version. Further analysis indicates that it is always recommended to use the γ-adjusted SQC/MM dynamics in the on-the-fly simulation of photoinduced dynamics of polyatomic systems, particularly when the excited state is well separated from the ground state in the Franck-Condon region. This work indicates that the on-the-fly SQC/MM method is a powerful simulation protocol to deal with the nonadiabatic dynamics of realistic polyatomic systems.

Analysis of bath motion in MM-SQC dynamics via dimensionality reduction approach: Principal component analysis

The system-plus-bath model is an important tool to understand the nonadiabatic dynamics of large molecular systems. Understanding the collective motion of a large number of bath modes is essential for revealing their key roles in the overall dynamics. Here, we applied principal component analysis (PCA) to investigate the bath motion in the basis of a large dataset generated from the symmetrical quasi-classical dynamics method based on the Meyer-Miller mapping Hamiltonian nonadiabatic dynamics for the excited-state energy transfer in the Frenkel-exciton model. The PCA method clearly elucidated that two types of bath modes, which either display strong vibronic coupling or have frequencies close to that of the electronic transition, are important to the nonadiabatic dynamics. These observations were fully consistent with the physical insights. The conclusions were based on the PCA of the trajectory data and did not involve significant pre-defined physical knowledge. The results show that the PCA approach, which is one of the simplest unsupervised machine learning dimensionality reduction methods, is a powerful one for analyzing complicated nonadiabatic dynamics in the condensed phase with many degrees of freedom.

Toward monitoring the dissipative vibrational energy flows in open quantum systems by mixed quantum-classical simulations

In open quantum system dynamics, rich information about the major energy relaxation channels and corresponding relaxation rates can be elucidated by monitoring the vibrational energy flow among individual bath modes. However, such calculations often become tremendously difficult as the complexity of the subsystem-bath coupling increases. In this paper, we attempt to make this task feasible by using a mixed quantum-classical method, the Poisson-bracket mapping equation with non-Hamiltonian modification (PBME-nH) [H. W. Kim and Y. M. Rhee, J. Chem. Phys. 140, 184106 (2014)]. For a quantum subsystem bilinearly coupled to harmonic bath modes, we derive an expression for the mode energy in terms of the classical positions and momenta of the nuclei, while keeping consistency with the energy of the quantum subsystem. The accuracy of the resulting expression is then benchmarked against a numerically exact method by using relatively simple models. Although our expression predicts a qualitatively correct dissipation rate for a range of situations, cases involving a strong vibronic resonance are quite challenging. This is attributed to the inherent lack of quantum back reaction in PBME-nH, which becomes significant when the subsystem strongly interacts with a small number of bath modes. A rigorous treatment of such an effect will be crucial for developing quantitative simulation methods that can handle generic subsystem-bath coupling.

Modeling nonadiabatic dynamics in condensed matter materials: some recent advances and applications

This review focuses on recent developments in the field of nonadiabatic molecular dynamics (NA-MD), with particular attention given to condensed-matter systems. NA-MD simulations for small molecular systems can be performed using high-level electronic structure (ES) calculations, methods accounting for the quantization of nuclear motion, and using fewer approximations in the dynamical methodology itself. Modeling condensed-matter systems imposes many limitations on various aspects of NA-MD computations, requiring approximations at various levels of theory-from the ES, to the ways in which the coupling of electrons and nuclei are accounted for. Nonetheless, the approximate treatment of NA-MD in condensed-phase materials has gained a spin lately in many applied studies. A number of advancements of the methodology and computational tools have been undertaken, including general-purpose methods, as well as those tailored to nanoscale and condensed matter systems. This review summarizes such methodological and software developments, puts them into the broader context of existing approaches, and highlights some of the challenges that remain to be solved.

Analytical derivation of equilibrium state for open quantum system

Calculation of the equilibrium state of an open quantum system interacting with a bath remains a challenge to this day, mostly due to a huge number of bath degrees of freedom. Here, we present an analytical expression for the reduced density operator in terms of an effective Hamiltonian for a high temperature case. Comparing with numerically exact results, we show that our theory is accurate for slow baths and up to intermediate system-bath coupling strengths. Our results demonstrate that the equilibrium state does not depend on the shape of spectral density in the slow bath regime. The key quantity in our theory is the effective coupling between the states, which depends exponentially on the ratio of the reorganization energy to temperature and, thus, has opposite temperature dependence than could be expected from the small polaron transformation.

Nonadiabatic Molecular Dynamics at Metal Surfaces

Dynamics at molecule-metal interfaces are a subject of intense current interest and come in many different flavors of experiments: gas-phase scattering, chemisorption, electrochemistry, nanojunction transport, and heterogeneous catalysis, to name a few. These dynamics involve nuclear degrees of freedom entangled with many electronic degrees of freedom (in the metal), and as such there is always the possibility for nonadiabatic phenomena to appear: the nuclei do not necessarily need to move slower than the electrons to break the Born-Oppenheimer (BO) approximation. In this Feature Article, we review a set of dynamical methods developed recently to deal with such nonadiabatic phenomena at a metal surface, methods that serve as alternatives to Tully's independent electron surface hopping (IESH) model. In the weak molecule-metal coupling regime, a classical master equation (CME) can be derived and a simple surface hopping approach is proposed to propagate nuclear and electronic dynamics stochastically. In the strong molecule-metal interaction regime, a Fokker-Planck equation can be derived for the nuclear dynamics, with electronic DoFs incorporated into the overall friction and random force. Lastly, a broadened classical master equation (BCME) can interpolate between the weak and strong molecule-metal interactions. Here, we briefly review these methods and the relevant benchmarking data, showing in particular how the methods can be used to calculate nonequilibrium transport properties. We highlight several open questions and pose several avenues for future study.

Initial sampling in symmetrical quasiclassical dynamics based on Li-Miller mapping Hamiltonian

A symmetrical quasiclassical (SQC) dynamics approach based on the Li-Miller (LM) mapping Hamiltonian (SQC-LM) was employed to describe nonadiabatic dynamics. In principle, the different initial sampling procedures may be applied in the SQC-LM dynamics, and the results may be dependent on different initial sampling. We provided various initial sampling approaches and checked their influence. We selected two groups of models including site-exciton models for exciton dynamics and linear vibronic coupling models for conical intersections to test the performance of SQC-LM dynamics with the different initial sampling methods. The results were examined with respect to those of the accurate multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree (MCTDH) quantum dynamics. For both the models, the SQC-LM method more-or-less gives a reasonable description of the population dynamics, while the influence of the initial sampling approaches on the final results is noticeable. It seems that the suitable initial sampling methods should be determined by the system under study. This indicates that the combination of the SQC-LM method with a suitable sampling approach may be a potential method in the description of nonadiabatic dynamics.

Performance of trajectory surface hopping method in the treatment of ultrafast intersystem crossing dynamics

We carried out extensive studies to examine the performance of the fewest-switches surface hopping method in the description of the ultrafast intersystem crossing dynamic of various singlet-triplet (S-T) models by comparison with the results of the exact full quantum dynamics. Different implementation details and some derivative approaches were examined. As expected, it is better to perform the trajectory surface hopping calculations in the spin-adiabatic representation or by the local diabatization approach, instead of in the spin-diabatic representation. The surface hopping method provides reasonable results for the short-time dynamics in the S-T model with weak spin-orbital coupling (diabatic coupling), although it does not perform well in the models with strong spin-orbital coupling (diabatic coupling). When the system accesses the S-T potential energy crossing with rather high kinetic energy, the trajectory surface hopping method tends to produce a good description of the nonadiabatic intersystem crossing dynamics. The impact of the decoherence correction on the performance of the trajectory surface hopping is system dependent. It improves the result accuracy in many cases, while its influence may also be minor for other cases.

A symmetrical quasi-classical windowing model for the molecular dynamics treatment of non-adiabatic processes involving many electronic states

In the previous work of Cotton and Miller [J. Chem. Phys. 145, 144108 (2016)], an improved symmetrical quasi-classical (SQC) windowing model for the molecular dynamics treatment of electronically non-adiabatic processes was developed in order to extend the original SQC approach to the regime of weak-coupling between the electronic states. The improved SQC model-based on triangular-shaped window functions-handled the weak-coupling limit as intended and, as a bonus, was shown to be universally superior to the original square/histogram SQC windowing model over all coupling regimes, but only for treating systems of two electronic states, as no higher-dimensional generalization was evident. This paper, therefore, provides a generalized version for treating an arbitrary number of electronic states. By construction, the benefits of the two-state triangle model-seamless treatment of weak-coupling and improved accuracy in all coupling regimes-carry over to the generalized version. Far more significant, however, is that the new model provides vastly improved windowing statistics in higher dimensions, enabling the SQC simulation of electronically non-adiabatic processes involving many more relevant electronic states than was previously practical. Capabilities are demonstrated with respect to a 24 pigment trimer model of the Fenna-Matthews-Olson light-harvesting complex, as well as treating similar 48- and 96-electronic state model problems, illustrating the scaling properties of the new method.

Ehrenfest+R dynamics. I. A mixed quantum-classical electrodynamics simulation of spontaneous emission

The dynamics of an electronic system interacting with an electromagnetic field is investigated within mixed quantum-classical theory. Beyond the classical path approximation (where we ignore all feedback from the electronic system on the photon field), we consider all electron-photon interactions explicitly according to Ehrenfest (i.e., mean-field) dynamics and a set of coupled Maxwell-Liouville equations. Because Ehrenfest dynamics cannot capture certain quantum features of the photon field correctly, we propose a new Ehrenfest+R method that can recover (by construction) spontaneous emission while also distinguishing between electromagnetic fluctuations and coherent emission.

Nonadiabatic Dynamics via the Symmetrical Quasi-Classical Method in the Presence of Anharmonicity

The symmetrical quasi-classical (SQC) method recently proposed by Miller and Cotton allows one to simulate nonadiabatic dynamics based on an algorithm with classical-like scaling with respect to system size. This is made possible by casting the electronic degrees of freedom in terms of mapping variables that can be propagated in a classical-like manner. While SQC was shown to be rather accurate when applied to benchmark models with harmonic electronic potential energy surfaces, it was also found to become inaccurate and to suffer numerical instabilities when applied to anharmonic systems. In this paper, we propose an extended SQC (E-SQC) methodology for overcoming those discrepancies by describing the anharmonic nuclear modes, which are coupled to the electronic degrees of freedom, in terms of classical-like mapping variables. The accuracy of E-SQC relative to standard SQC is demonstrated on benchmark models with quartic and Morse potential energy surfaces.

Reaction rate theory: summarising remarks

This paper summarizes the contributions to the Faraday Discussion on reaction rate theory. The topics range from contemporary usage of transition state theory, including rare event sampling, to instantons and non-adiabatic dynamics.

Classical molecular dynamics simulation of electronically non-adiabatic processes

Both classical and quantum mechanics (as well as hybrids thereof, i.e., semiclassical approaches) find widespread use in simulating dynamical processes in molecular systems. For large chemical systems, however, which involve potential energy surfaces (PES) of general/arbitrary form, it is usually the case that only classical molecular dynamics (MD) approaches are feasible, and their use is thus ubiquitous nowadays, at least for chemical processes involving dynamics on a single PES (i.e., within a single Born–Oppenheimer electronic state). This paper reviews recent developments in an approach which extends standard classical MD methods to the treatment of electronically non-adiabatic processes, i.e., those that involve transitions between different electronic states. The approach treats nuclear and electronic degrees of freedom (DOF) equivalently (i.e., by classical mechanics, thereby retaining the simplicity of standard MD), and provides “quantization” of the electronic states through a symmetrical quasi-classical (SQC) windowing model. The approach is seen to be capable of treating extreme regimes of strong and weak coupling between the electronic states, as well as accurately describing coherence effects in the electronic DOF (including the de-coherence of such effects caused by coupling to the nuclear DOF). A survey of recent applications is presented to illustrate the performance of the approach. Also described is a newly developed variation on the original SQC model (found universally superior to the original) and a general extension of the SQC model to obtain the full electronic density matrix (at no additional cost/complexity).