Communication: Standard surface hopping predicts incorrect scaling for Marcus’ golden-rule rate: The decoherence problem cannot be ignored

Abstract

We evaluate the accuracy of Tully's surface hopping algorithm for the spin-boson model for the case of a small diabatic coupling parameter (V). We calculate the transition rates between diabatic surfaces, and we compare our results to the expected Marcus rates. We show that standard surface hopping yields an incorrect scaling with diabatic coupling (linear in V), which we demonstrate is due to an incorrect treatment of decoherence. By modifying standard surface hopping to include decoherence events, we recover the correct scaling (∼V2).

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Nov 21, 2011
Source ID
10.1063/1.3663870

Entities

People

  • Brian R. Landry
  • Joseph E Subotnik

Organizations

  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
  • University of Pennsylvania

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Atmospheric Science/Meteorology
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Computer Networking