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The Journal of Chemical Physics

Investigation of the dynamics of two coupled oscillators with mixed quantum-classical methods

Jingrui Li, Clemens Woywod, Valérie Vallet, Christoph Meier

Published May 11, 2006• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The dynamics of two coupled oscillators can become quite complex if anharmonic potential energy functions are employed. This type of system therefore represents a good model for an investigation of the performance of mixed quantum-classical methods. In this work, the motion of two coupled particles with a mass ratio of one to ten is studied with three different mixed quantum-classical methods in the presence of anharmonic potential terms for a comparison with exact quantum mechanical calculations. The mixed quantum-classical approaches include the multitrajectory Ehrenfest, the mixed quantum-classical Bohmian (MQCB), and the so-called coupled Schrödinger equations (CSE) formalisms. The analysis shows that while the description of a weakly anharmonic system by the Ehrenfest and MQCB schemes is accurate if proper sampling techniques are applied, both approximations break down rapidly if the anharmonic terms are increased. The performance of the simple CSE prescription, which corresponds to a reduction of the full two-dimensional wave function to two one-dimensional wave functions representing two quantum oscillators coupled via the potential energy in a classical fashion, decreases if the width of the initial wave packet is enlarged. The dependence of the CSE method on the diffuseness of the initial wave packet is therefore opposite to that of the MQCB method, which is more accurate for wide wave packets. Overall, the multitrajectory Ehrenfest ansatz is found to be most successful in reproducing the exact quantum results.

DOI
10.1063/1.2196408

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The dynamics of two coupled oscillators can become quite complex if anharmonic potential energy functions are employed. This type of system therefore represents a good model for an investigation of the performance of mixed quantum-classical methods. In this work, the motion of two coupled particles with a mass ratio of one to ten is studied with three different mixed quantum-classical methods in the presence of anharmonic potential terms for a comparison with exact quantum mechanical calculations. The mixed quantum-classical approaches include the multitrajectory Ehrenfest, the mixed quantum-classical Bohmian (MQCB), and the so-called coupled Schrödinger equations (CSE) formalisms. The analysis shows that while the description of a weakly anharmonic system by the Ehrenfest and MQCB schemes is accurate if proper sampling techniques are applied, both approximations break down rapidly if the anharmonic terms are increased. The performance of the simple CSE prescription, which corresponds to a reduction of the full two-dimensional wave function to two one-dimensional wave functions representing two quantum oscillators coupled via the potential energy in a classical fashion, decreases if the width of the initial wave packet is enlarged. The dependence of the CSE method on the diffuseness of the initial wave packet is therefore opposite to that of the MQCB method, which is more accurate for wide wave packets. Overall, the multitrajectory Ehrenfest ansatz is found to be most successful in reproducing the exact quantum results.
A novel time-dependent hybrid quantum/classical propagation scheme based on Bohmian quantum trajectories is presented. The quantum subsystem is described by a wave packet depending on the quantum variables x and, via the total potential energy of the system, parametrically on the classical trajectories X(t). The wave packet is used to calculate de Broglie–Bohm quantum trajectories x(t) which are used to calculate the force acting on the classical variables. Quantum corrections of the classical equation of motion are also included. The method is applied to a simple case of two coupled oscillators. Comparison between exact quantum and approximate results demonstrates that these MQCB (Mixed Quantum/Classical Bohmian) trajectories provide a good description of the energy exchange between the two oscillators.
We apply the MQCB (mixed quantum/classical mechanics based on Bohmian trajectories) [E. Gindensperger, C. Meier, and J. A. Beswick, J. Chem. Phys. 113, 9369 (2000)] to the case where the quantum degree of freedom contains both bound and continuum states. The quantum degree of freedom is treated by a wave packet that is propagated on a spatial grid with a Hamiltonian that depends parametrically on the classical degrees of freedom, while the classical degrees of freedom themselves are coupled to the wave function via quantum trajectories. The method is applied to a simple model of a light particle colliding with a heavy (classical) particle absorbed on a surface, which has been used by other authors to develop methods to combine quantum degrees of freedom including continuum states with classical mechanics. The results are compared to the Ehrenfest mean-field method as well as to full quantum results.
The coupled Schrödinger equations that describe nonadiabatic dynamics are recast using the Bohm formulation of quantum mechanics. The resulting coupled Bohm equations are solved numerically for two scattering models, giving results that are essentially identical to wave-packet solution of the original coupled Schrödinger equations. The classical limit of the set of coupled Bohm equations is then described, producing a mixed quantum-classical theory incorporating classical-like motion on each potential energy surface accompanied by quantum transitions between the quantum states. Numerical tests of the mixed quantum-classical method are in excellent agreement with the accurate full-quantum results for the model problems. The method is contrasted with the related surface-hopping approach. It is shown that computing the dynamics of a distribution of classical particles is more consistent and more accurate than computing the motion of independent point particles as with surface hopping.
In this paper, the classical Schrödinger equation (CSE), which allows the study of classical dynamics in terms of wave functions, is analyzed theoretically and numerically. First, departing from classical (Newtonian) mechanics, and assuming an additional single-valued condition for the Hamilton’s principal function, the CSE is obtained. This additional assumption implies inherent non-classical features on the description of the dynamics obtained from the CSE: the trajectories do not cross in the configuration space. Second, departing from Bohmian mechanics and invoking the quantum-to-classical transition, the CSE is obtained in a natural way for the center of mass of a quantum system with a large number of identical particles. This quantum development imposes the condition of dealing with a narrow wave packet, which implicitly avoids the non-classical features mentioned above. We illustrate all the above points with numerical simulations of the classical and quantum Schrödinger equations for different systems.
Several theoretical methods for the computation of quantum dynamical quantities are formulated, implemented, and applied, in the overall context of overcoming the exponential scaling property of quantum mechanics. The convergence of the approximate forward-backward semiclassical dynamics (FBSD) method has been accelerated by working with only the imaginary part of the real-time position and momentum time correlation functions. Simple manipulations allow the computationally favorable limit of a single factorization (“bead”) of the Boltzmann operator to yield greatly improved results. Numerical examples for a one-dimensional anharmonic oscillator and Lennard-Jones fluids are presented. Bohm's trajectory formulation of quantum mechanics is an exact mapping of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation onto classical fluid dynamics, plus one extra term responsible for all non-classical effects, the dreaded quantum potential. A computational procedure has been introduced to stably solve Bohm's hydrodynamic equations of motion in the forward-backward quantum dynamics (FBQD) formulation of time correlation functions, and applied to one-dimensional bound systems at zero and low temperature. A key step in the formulation of this procedure was the use of Hamilton's law of varying action, a generalization of Hamilton's principle of stationary action applicable to initial-value problems. This has resulted in the first reported synthetic computation of non-stationary quantum trajectories for a fully anharmonic oscillator. Success in one dimension has laid the groundwork for future extension to a rigorous quantum-classical scheme, which is briefly discussed. Other unpublished methods for obtaining time correlation functions and propagators in quantum dynamics are also discussed.
Using the general anharmonic oscillator as a case study, we examine the coupled-cluster method (CCM) in some detail. Emphasis is specially placed on the accuracy of the standard ground-state energy calculation and the excitation spectrum as derived via the Emrich ansatz. We are particularly interested in problems that can arise from large differences between the exact wave function and its model counterpart that forms the starting point of the CCM. To this end we begin with a variational Hartree approximation applied to three particular anharmonic-oscillator Hamiltonians that contain, respectively, pure quartic, equally weighted cubic and quartic, and double-well perturbations. These are chosen to provide increasingly stringent tests for the CCM in the above sense. Considerable attention is paid to the variational description of the double-well case, where the various possible solutions to the Hartree equations are considered and a further calculation on the energy-level splitting is performed. The CCM is then used to improve systematically upon our chosen starting point and is shown, particularly for the ground state, both to produce extremely accurate results and to be rather resilient to even gross deficiencies in the starting wave function. The main problem is the double-well system, where the CCM shows its lack of intrinsic inbuilt tunneling mechanisms via the absence of level splitting. Even here the CCM still produces very accurate average energies for very deep wells. While clearly needing some modification in such extreme cases, the CCM is shown to be quite adaptable and robust with regard to inaccurate starting wave functions.