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The Journal of Chemical Physics

Mean field approximation for the stochastic Schrödinger equation

Oleg V. Prezhdo

Published Nov 8, 1999• 183 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A stochastic mean-field (SMF) approach to nonadiabatic molecular simulations is introduced. Based on the quantum-classical mean-field approximation, SMF extents the classical model of the environment to incorporate its quantum properties. SMF differs from the ordinary mean-field method by the presence of additional terms in the Schrödinger equation that are due to the system-environment interaction. SMF resolves the two major drawbacks of mixed quantum-classical models. First, decoherence effects in the quantum subsystem are rigorously included. Present in all open systems, decoherence is crucial for nonadiabatic transitions taking place in condensed media. Second, the correct branching of the quantum-classical trajectories is achieved. In earlier approaches, the correct branching of the trajectories was attained via ad hoc surface hopping procedures, which experienced the hop rejection problem and could produce unfavorable classical trajectories in regions of nonadiabatic transitions depending on the quantum basis. It is shown that the correct branching of the trajectories is a direct consequence of decoherence. It is argued that the hop rejection problem disappears in SMF. The decoherence operator is discussed in detail, and the properties of the SMF method are illustrated with model simulations.

DOI
10.1063/1.480178

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A stochastic mean-field (SMF) approach to nonadiabatic molecular simulations is introduced. Based on the quantum-classical mean-field approximation, SMF extents the classical model of the environment to incorporate its quantum properties. SMF differs from the ordinary mean-field method by the presence of additional terms in the Schrödinger equation that are due to the system-environment interaction. SMF resolves the two major drawbacks of mixed quantum-classical models. First, decoherence effects in the quantum subsystem are rigorously included. Present in all open systems, decoherence is crucial for nonadiabatic transitions taking place in condensed media. Second, the correct branching of the quantum-classical trajectories is achieved. In earlier approaches, the correct branching of the trajectories was attained via ad hoc surface hopping procedures, which experienced the hop rejection problem and could produce unfavorable classical trajectories in regions of nonadiabatic transitions depending on the quantum basis. It is shown that the correct branching of the trajectories is a direct consequence of decoherence. It is argued that the hop rejection problem disappears in SMF. The decoherence operator is discussed in detail, and the properties of the SMF method are illustrated with model simulations.
We propose a method which combines the quantum-classical mapping approach to surface hopping (MASH) with the dissipative quantum dynamics of the Lindblad master equation. Like conventional surface-hopping methods, our approach is based on classical trajectories coupled to the dynamics of a quantum subsystem. However, instead of evolving the subsystem wavefunction according to the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, we use stochastic quantum trajectories derived from secular Redfield theory. This enables the simulation of open quantum systems coupled simultaneously to Markovian quantum baths and anharmonic non-Markovian classical degrees of freedom. Applications to the spin--boson model and to the cavity-enhanced fluorescence of an electronically nonadiabatic molecule show excellent agreement with fully quantum-mechanical benchmarks.
We present a semiclassical approach for nonadiabatic molecular dynamics based on the Ehrenfest method with corrections for decoherence and detailed balance. Decoherence is described via a coherence penalty functional that drives dynamics away from regions in Hilbert space characterized by large values of coherences. Detailed balance is incorporated by modification of the off-diagonal matrix elements with a quantum correction factor used in semiclassical approximations to quantum time-correlation functions. Both decoherence and detailed balance corrections introduce nonlinear terms to the Schrödinger equation. At the same time, the simplicity of fully deterministic dynamics and a single trajectory for each initial condition is preserved. In contrast, surface hopping is stochastic and requires averaging over multiple realization of the stochastic process for each initial condition. The Ehrenfest-decoherence-detailed-balance (Ehrenfest-DDB) method is adapted to the classical path approximation and ab initio time-dependent density functional theory and applied to an experimentally studied nanoscale system consisting of a fluorophore molecule and an scanning tunneling microscopy tip and undergoing current-induced charge injection, cooling, and recombination. Ehrenfest-DDB produces time scales that are similar to those obtained with decoherence induced surface hopping, which is a popular nonadiabatic molecular dynamics technique applied to condensed matter. At long times, Ehrenfest-DDB dynamics slows down considerably because the detailed balance correction makes off-diagonal elements go to zero on approach to Boltzmann equilibrium. The Ehrenfest-DDB technique provides efficient means to study quantum dynamics in large systems.
Often quantum systems are not isolated and interactions with their environments must be taken into account. In such open quantum systems these environmental interactions can lead to decoherence and dissipation, which have a marked influence on the properties of the quantum system. In many instances the environment is well-approximated by classical mechanics, so that one is led to consider the dynamics of open quantum-classical systems. Since a full quantum dynamical description of large many-body systems is not currently feasible, mixed quantum-classical methods can provide accurate and computationally tractable ways to follow the dynamics of both the system and its environment. This review focuses on quantum-classical Liouville dynamics, one of several quantum-classical descriptions, and discusses the problems that arise when one attempts to combine quantum and classical mechanics, coherence and decoherence in quantum-classical systems, nonadiabatic dynamics, surface-hopping and mean-field theories and their relation to quantum-classical Liouville dynamics, as well as methods for simulating the dynamics.
Often quantum systems are not isolated and interactions with their environments must be taken into account. In such open quantum systems these environmental interactions can lead to decoherence and dissipation, which have a marked influence on the properties of the quantum system. In many instances the environment is well-approximated by classical mechanics, so that one is led to consider the dynamics of open quantum-classical systems. Since a full quantum dynamical description of large many-body systems is not currently feasible, mixed quantum-classical methods can provide accurate and computationally tractable ways to follow the dynamics of both the system and its environment. This review focuses on quantum-classical Liouville dynamics, one of several quantum-classical descriptions, and discusses the problems that arise when one attempts to combine quantum and classical mechanics, coherence and decoherence in quantum-classical systems, nonadiabatic dynamics, surface-hopping and mean-field theories and their relation to quantum-classical Liouville dynamics, as well as methods for simulating the dynamics.
We present an ab initio algorithm for quantum dynamics simulations that reformulates the traditional ``curse of dimensionality'' that plagues all state-of-the-art techniques for solving the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation. Using a stochastic wave-function ansatz that is based on a set of interacting single-particle conditional wave functions, we show that the difficulty of the problem becomes dominated by the number of trajectories needed to describe the process, rather than simply the number of degrees of freedom involved. This highly parallelizable technique achieves quantitative accuracy for situations in which mean-field theory drastically fails to capture qualitative aspects of the dynamics, such as quantum decoherence or the reduced nuclear probability density, using orders of magnitude fewer trajectories than a mean-field simulation. We illustrate the performance of this method for two fundamental nonequilibrium processes: a photoexcited proton-coupled electron transfer problem, and nonequilibrium dynamics in a cavity bound electron-photon system in the ultrastrong-coupling regime.
We present an ab initio algorithm for quantum dynamics simulations that reformulates the traditional “curse of dimensionality” that plagues all state-of-the-art techniques for solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. Using a stochastic wave-function ansatz that is based on a set of interacting single-particle conditional wave functions, we show that the difficulty of the problem becomes dominated by the number of trajectories needed to describe the process, rather than simply the number of degrees of freedom involved. This highly parallelizable technique achieves quantitative accuracy for situations in which mean-field theory drastically fails to capture qualitative aspects of the dynamics, such as quantum decoherence or the reduced nuclear probability density, using orders of magnitude fewer trajectories than a mean-field simulation. We illustrate the performance of this method for two fundamental nonequilibrium processes: a photoexcited proton-coupled electron transfer problem, and nonequilibrium dynamics in a cavity bound electron-photon system in the ultrastrong-coupling regime.