An implicit split-operator algorithm for the nonlinear time-dependent Schrödinger equation

Many approximate solutions of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation can be formulated as exact solutions of a nonlinear Schrödinger equation with an effective Hamiltonian operator depending on the state of the system. We show that Heller’s thawed Gaussian approximation, Coalson and Karplus’s variational Gaussian approximation, and other Gaussian wavepacket dynamics methods fit into this framework if the effective potential is a quadratic polynomial with state-dependent coefficients. We study such a nonlinear Schrödinger equation in full generality: we derive general equations of motion for the Gaussian’s parameters, demonstrate time reversibility and norm conservation, and analyze conservation of energy, effective energy, and symplectic structure. We also describe efficient, high-order geometric integrators for the numerical solution of this nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The general theory is illustrated by examples of this family of Gaussian wavepacket dynamics, including the variational and nonvariational thawed and frozen Gaussian approximations and their special limits based on the global harmonic, local harmonic, single-Hessian, local cubic, and local quartic approximations for the potential energy. We also propose a new method by augmenting the local cubic approximation with a single fourth derivative. Without substantially increasing the cost, the proposed “single-quartic” variational Gaussian approximation improves the accuracy over the local cubic approximation and, at the same time, conserves both the effective energy and symplectic structure, unlike the much more expensive local quartic approximation. Most results are presented in both Heller’s and Hagedorn’s parametrizations of the Gaussian wavepacket.

Family of Gaussian wavepacket dynamics methods from the perspective of a nonlinear Schrödinger equation

Vaníček

2023

High-order geometric integrators for the local cubic variational Gaussian wavepacket dynamics

Moghaddasi Fereidani,

Vaníček

2024

Gaussian wavepacket dynamics has proven to be a useful semiclassical approximation for quantum simulations of high-dimensional systems with low anharmonicity. Compared to Heller’s original local harmonic method, the variational Gaussian wavepacket dynamics is more accurate, but much more difficult to apply in practice because it requires evaluating the expectation values of the potential energy, gradient, and Hessian. If the variational approach is applied to the local cubic approximation of the potential, these expectation values can be evaluated analytically, but they still require the costly third derivative of the potential. To reduce the cost of the resulting local cubic variational Gaussian wavepacket dynamics, we describe efficient high-order geometric integrators, which are symplectic, time-reversible, and norm-conserving. For small time steps, they also conserve the effective energy. We demonstrate the efficiency and geometric properties of these integrators numerically on a multidimensional, nonseparable coupled Morse potential.

Finite-temperature vibronic spectra from the split-operator coherence thermofield dynamics

Zhang,

Vaníček

2024

We present a numerically exact approach for evaluating vibrationally resolved electronic spectra at finite temperatures using the coherence thermofield dynamics. In this method, which avoids implementing an algorithm for solving the von Neumann equation for coherence, the thermal vibrational ensemble is first mapped to a pure-state wavepacket in an augmented space, and this wavepacket is then propagated by solving the standard, zero-temperature Schrödinger equation with the split-operator Fourier method. We show that the finite-temperature spectra obtained with the coherence thermofield dynamics in a Morse potential agree exactly with those computed by Boltzmann-averaging the spectra of individual vibrational levels. Because the split-operator thermofield dynamics on a full tensor-product grid is restricted to low-dimensional systems, we briefly discuss how the accessible dimensionality can be increased by various techniques developed for the zero-temperature split-operator Fourier method.