We investigate the performance of on-the-fly ab initio (OTF-AI) semiclassical dynamics combined with the thawed Gaussian approximation (TGA) for computing vibrationally resolved absorption and photoelectron spectra. Ammonia is used as a prototype of floppy molecules, whose potential energy surfaces display strong anharmonicity. We show that despite complications due to the presence of large amplitude motion, the main features of the spectra are captured by the OTF-AI-TGA, which—by definition—does not require any a priori knowledge of the potential energy surface. Moreover, the computed spectra are significantly better than those based on the popular global harmonic approximation. Finally, we probe the limit of the TGA to describe higher-resolution spectra, where long time dynamics is required.
We explore three specific approaches for speeding up the calculation of quantum time correlation functions needed for time-resolved electronic spectra. The first relies on finding a minimum set of sufficiently accurate electronic surfaces. The second increases the time step required for convergence of exact quantum simulations by using different split-step algorithms to solve the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. The third approach lowers the number of trajectories needed for convergence of approximate semiclassical dynamics methods.
Azulene is a prototypical molecule with an anomalous fluorescence from the second excited electronic state, thus violating Kasha's rule, and with an emission spectrum that cannot be understood within the Condon approximation. To better understand photophysics and spectroscopy of azulene and other non-conventional molecules, we develop a systematic, general, and efficient computational approach combining semiclassical dynamics of nuclei with ab initio electronic structure. First, to analyze the nonadiabatic effects, we complement the standard population dynamics by a rigorous 1 arXiv:2001.08414v2 [physics.chem-ph] measure of adiabaticity, estimated with the multiple-surface dephasing representation.Second, we propose a new semiclassical method for simulating non-Condon spectra, which combines the extended thawed Gaussian approximation with the efficient single-Hessian approach. S 1 ← S 0 and S 2 ← S 0 absorption and S 2 → S 0 emission spectra of azulene, recorded in a new set of experiments, agree very well with our calculations. We find that accuracy of the evaluated spectra requires the treatment of anharmonicity, Herzberg-Teller, and mode-mixing effects.
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