Grid-Based Ehrenfest Model To Study Electron-Nuclear Processes.

ABSTRACT

The two-dimensional electron-nuclear Schrödinger equation using soft-core Coulomb potentials has been a cornerstone for modeling and predicting the behavior of one-active-electron diatomic molecules, particularly for processes where both bound and continuum states are important. The model, however, is computationally expensive to extend to more electron or nuclear coordinates. Here we propose use of the Ehrenfest approach to treat the nuclear motion, while the electronic motion is still solved by quantum propagation on a grid. In this work, we present results for a one-dimensional treatment of H2+, where the quantum and semiclassical dynamics can be directly compared, showing remarkably good agreement for a variety of situations. The advantage of the Ehrenfest approach is that it can be easily extended to treat as many nuclear degrees of freedom as needed.