Development of semiclassical molecular dynamics simulation method

Various quantum mechanical effects such as nonadiabatic transitions, quantum mechanical tunneling and coherence play crucial roles in a variety of chemical and biological systems.

Control of nonadiabatic dissociation dynamics with the use of laser-induced wave packet interferences

Based on wave packet interferences induced by a stationary laser field, a simple way of controlling nonadiabatic dissociation dynamics is proposed. We treat a simple two-state model of diatomic molecules. In this model, there exist two dissociative potential energy curves which cross and are strongly coupled at an internuclear distance, and thus dissociations into one channel are predominant. We propose a control scheme to selectively dissociate a molecule into any favorite channel by choosing the laser frequency and intensity appropriately. The semiclassical estimation of desirable laser parameters can be performed easily by regarding the dissociation processes as nonadiabatic transitions between the Floquet states. The agreement between the semiclassical estimation and the quantum wave packet calculation is found to be satisfactory in the high frequency region (> or =1000 cm(-1)) where the Floquet state picture is valid. In the low frequency region (<1000 cm(-1)), on the other hand, there are discrepancies between them due to the invalidity of the Floquet picture and the dissociation probability is sensitive to the laser phase. This control scheme is applied to the predissociation dynamics of NaI, NaI-->Na+I.

Dynamics of Nonadiabatic Chemical Reactions

New methods are proposed to treat nonadiabatic chemical dynamics in realistic large molecular systems by using the Zhu-Nakamura (ZN) theory of curve-crossing problems. They include the incorporation of the ZN formulas into the Herman-Kluk type semiclassical wave packet propagation method and the trajectory surface hopping (TSH) method, formulation of the nonadiabatic transition state theory, and its application to the electron transfer problem. Because the nonadiabatic coupling is a vector in multidimensional space, the one-dimensional ZN theory works all right. Even the classically forbidden transitions can be correctly treated by the ZN formulas. In the case of electron transfer, a new formula that can improve the celebrated Marcus theory in the case of normal regime is obtained so that it can work nicely in the intermediate and strong electronic coupling regimes. All these formulations mentioned above are demonstrated to work well in comparison with the exact quantum mechanical numerical solutions and are expected to be applicable to large systems that cannot be treated quantum mechanically numerically exactly. To take into account another quantum mechanical effect, namely, the tunneling effect, an efficient method to detect caustics from which tunneling trajectories emanate is proposed. All the works reported here are the results of recent activities carried out in the author's research group. Finally, the whole set of ZN formulas is presented in Appendix.

Ab initio nonadiabatic quantum dynamics of cyclohexadiene/hexatriene ultrafast photoisomerization

Reaction mechanisms of the ultrafast photoisomerization between cyclohexadiene and hexatriene have been elucidated by the quantum dynamics on the ab initio potential energy surfaces calculated by multireference configuration interaction method. In addition to the quantum wave-packet dynamics along the two-dimensional reaction coordinates, the semiclassical analyses have also been carried out to correctly estimate the nonadiabatic transition probabilities around conical intersections in the full-dimensional space. The reaction time durations of radiationless decays in the wave-packet dynamics are found to be generally consistent with the femtosecond time-resolution experimental observations. The nonadiabatic transition probabilities among the ground (S0), first (S1), and second (S2) excited states have been estimated by using the semiclassical Zhu-Nakamura formula considering the full-dimensional wave-packet density distributions in the vicinity of conical intersections under the harmonic normal mode approximation. The cyclohexadiene (CHD) ring-opening process proceeds descending on the S1(1 1B) potential after the photoexcitation. The major part of the wave-packet decays from S1(1 1B) to S1(2 1A) by the first seam line crossing along the C2-symmetry-breaking directions. The experimentally observed ultrafast S1-S0 decay can be explained by the dynamics through the S1-S0 conical intersection along the direction toward the five-membered ring. The CHD: hexatriene (HT) branching ratio is estimated to be approximately 5:5, which is in accordance with the experiment in solution. This branching ratio is found to be mainly governed by the location of the five-membered ring S1-S0 conical intersection along the ground state potential ridge between CHD and HT.