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Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation

Comparison of Matrix Product State and Multiconfiguration Time-Dependent Hartree Methods for Nonadiabatic Dynamics of Exciton Dissociation

Maximilian F. X. Dorfner, Dominik Brey, Irène Burghardt, Frank Ortmann

Published Oct 4, 2024• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The excited-state dynamics of organic molecules, molecular aggregates, and donor-acceptor clusters is typically governed by the interplay of electronic excitations and, due to their flexibility and soft bonding, by the interaction with their vibrations. This interaction in these systems can be characterized by a few relevant electronic states that are coupled to numerous vibrational normal modes, encompassing a vast configurational space of the molecules. The full quantum simulation of these type of systems has been long dominated by the multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree (MCTDH) approach and its multilayer variants, which are considered the gold standard in the presence of electron-vibration coupling with a large number of modes. Recently, also the matrix product state ansatz (MPS) with appropriate time-evolution schemes has been applied to these types of Hamiltonians. In this article, we provide a numerical comparison of excited-state dynamics between the MCTDH and MPS approaches for two electron-vibration coupled systems. Notably, we consider two models for exciton dissociation at a P3HT:PCBM heterojunction, comprising two electronic states and 100 vibrational modes, and 26 electronic states and 113 vibrational modes, respectively. While both methods agree very well for the first model, more pronounced deviations are found for the second model. We trace back the divergence between the methods to the different way entanglement is treated.

DOI
10.1021/acs.jctc.4c00751

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The excited-state dynamics of organic molecules, molecular aggregates, and donor-acceptor clusters is typically governed by the interplay of electronic excitations and, due to their flexibility and soft bonding, by the interaction with their vibrations. This interaction in these systems can be characterized by a few relevant electronic states that are coupled to numerous vibrational normal modes, encompassing a vast configurational space of the molecules. The full quantum simulation of these type of systems has been long dominated by the multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree (MCTDH) approach and its multilayer variants, which are considered the gold standard in the presence of electron-vibration coupling with a large number of modes. Recently, also the matrix product state ansatz (MPS) with appropriate time-evolution schemes has been applied to these types of Hamiltonians. In this article, we provide a numerical comparison of excited-state dynamics between the MCTDH and MPS approaches for two electron-vibration coupled systems. Notably, we consider two models for exciton dissociation at a P3HT:PCBM heterojunction, comprising two electronic states and 100 vibrational modes, and 26 electronic states and 113 vibrational modes, respectively. While both methods agree very well for the first model, more pronounced deviations are found for the second model. We trace back the divergence between the methods to the different way entanglement is treated.
Tensor networks, such as matrix product states (MPS) and tree tensor network states (TTNS), are powerful ansätze for simulating quantum dynamics. While both ansätze are theoretically exact in the limit of large bond dimensions, [ J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2024, 20, 8767–8781] reported a non-negligible discrepancy in its calculations for exciton dissociation. To resolve this inconsistency, we conduct a systematic comparison using Renormalizer, a unified software framework for MPS and TTNS. By revisiting the benchmark P3HT:PCBM heterojunction model, we show that the observed discrepancies arise primarily from insufficient bond dimensions. By increasing bond dimensions, we reduce the relative difference in occupancy for weakly populated electronic states from up to 60% toward the end of the simulation to less than 10% and the absolute difference from 0.05 to 0.005. We also discuss the impact of tensor network structures on accuracy and efficiency, with the difference further reduced by an optimized TTNS structure. Our results confirm that both methods converge to numerically exact solutions when bond dimensions are adequately scaled. This work not only validates the reliability of both methods but also provides high-accuracy benchmark data for future developments in quantum dynamics simulations.
The matrix product state formulation of the multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree theory, MPS-MCTDH, reported previously [Kurashige, J. Chem. Phys. 2018, 19, 194114] is extended to realistic anharmonic potentials with n -mode representations beyond the linear vibronic coupling model. For realistic vibrational potentials, the local mode representation should give a more compact representation of the potentials, i.e., lowering the dimensionality of the entanglements, than the normal coordinates, and the MPS-MCTDH formulation should work more efficiently and maintain the accuracy with a small bond dimension of the MPS ansatz. In fact, it was confirmed that the use of the local coordinates made the interaction matrices diagonal dominant and the number of terms in the n -body expansion of the potentials was significantly reduced. The method was applied to the IR spectrum of the CH 2 O molecule, the zero-point energies, and the vibrational energy redistribution dynamics of polyenes C 2 n H 2 n +2 . The results showed that the efficiency of the MPS-MCTDH method is significantly accelerated by the use of local coordinates even if the long-range interactions are included in the potential.
Recent advances in experimental techniques have enabled precise characterization of fundamental nonadiabatic and even electronic dynamics in molecules, on ultrafast time scales reaching femtosecond to attosecond resolution. However, accurate theoretical simulation of these ultrafast chemical dynamics processes in large systems remains challenging, largely due to the overwhelming number of degrees of freedom (DoFs) and the pronounced many-body correlations. In recent years, by leveraging efficient decomposition schemes for high-dimensional wave function and operator tensors, the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group (TD-DMRG) has emerged as a powerful and accurate quantum dynamics method for simulating nonadiabatic and electron dynamics in large chemical systems, in conjunction with realistic electron/exciton-vibration/phonon models or ab initio quantum chemistry many-electron Hamiltonians. This review outlines the fundamentals of TD-DMRG for chemical dynamics, covering matrix product state/operator (MPS/MPO) frameworks and algorithms from ground-state calculations to time evolution. We discuss thermal/environmental effects and compare TD-DMRG with other tensor network methods such as multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree (MCTDH) and multilayer MCTDH (ML-MCTDH). Demonstrated applications include simulations of pyrazine absorption, singlet fission in rubrene crystal, and charge migration in chloroacetylene cation. These show TD-DMRG’s capability for modeling complex ultrafast processes from femtoseconds to attoseconds with controlled accuracy.
A matrix product state formulation of the multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree (MPS-MCTDH) theory is presented. The Hilbert space that is spanned by the direct products of the phonon degree of freedoms, which is linearly parameterized in the MCTDH ansatz and thus results in an exponential increase in the computational cost, is parametrized by the MPS form. Equations of motion based on the Dirac-Frenkel time-dependent variational principle is derived by using the tangent space projection and the projector-splitting technique for the MPS, which have been recently developed. The mean-field operators, which appear in the equation of motion of the MCTDH single particle functions, are written in terms of the MPS form and efficiently evaluated by a sweep algorithm that is similar to the density-matrix renormalized group sweep. The efficiency and convergence of the MPS approximation to the MCTDH are demonstrated by quantum dynamics simulations of extended excitonic molecular systems.
Electronic and/or vibronic coherence has been found by recent ultrafast spectroscopy experiments in many chemical, biological, and material systems. This indicates that there are strong and complicated interactions between electronic states and vibration modes in realistic chemical systems. Therefore, simulations of quantum dynamics with a large number of electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom are highly desirable. Due to the efficient compression and localized representation of quantum states in the matrix-product state (MPS) formulation, time-evolution methods based on the MPS framework, which we summarily refer to as tDMRG (time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group) methods, are considered to be promising candidates to study the quantum dynamics of realistic chemical systems. In this work, we benchmark the performances of four different tDMRG methods, including global Taylor, global Krylov, and local one-site and two-site time-dependent variational principles (1TDVP and 2TDVP), with a comparison to multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree and experimental results. Two typical chemical systems of internal conversion and singlet fission are investigated: one containing strong and high-order local and nonlocal electron-vibration couplings and the other exhibiting a continuous phonon bath. The comparison shows that the tDMRG methods (particularly, the 2TDVP method) can describe the full quantum dynamics in large chemical systems accurately and efficiently. Several key parameters in the tDMRG calculation including the truncation error threshold, time interval, and ordering of local sites were also investigated to strike the balance between efficiency and accuracy of results.
We present how to compute vibrational eigenstates with tree tensor network states (TTNSs), the underlying ansatz behind the multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree (ML-MCTDH) method. The eigenstates are computed with an algorithm that is based on the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG). We apply this to compute the vibrational spectrum of acetonitrile (CH3CN) to high accuracy and compare TTNSs with matrix product states (MPSs), the ansatz behind the DMRG. The presented optimization scheme converges much faster than ML-MCTDH-based optimization. For this particular system, we found no major advantage of the more general TTNS over MPS. We highlight that for both TTNS and MPS, the usage of an adaptive bond dimension significantly reduces the amount of required parameters. We furthermore propose a procedure to find good trees.