XMCQDPT2-Fidelity Transfer-Learning Potentials and a Wavepacket Oscillation Model with Power-Law Decay for Ultrafast Photodynamics
Department of Chemistry, Lomonosov Moscow State University（莫斯科大学化学系）；MSU Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Lomonosov Moscow State University（莫斯科大学人工智能研究所）；Institute of Quantum Physics, Irkutsk National Research Technical University（伊尔库茨克国立研究技术大学量子物理研究所）
Ivan V. Dudakov, Pavel M. Radzikovitsky, Dmitry S. Popov, Denis A. Firsov, Vadim V. Korolev, Daniil N. Chistikov, Vladimir E. Bochenkov, Anastasia V. Bochenkova
A central pursuit in theoretical chemistry is the accurate simulation of photochemical reactions, which are governed by nonadiabatic transitions through conical intersections. Machine learning has emerged as a transformative tool for constructing the necessary potential energy surfaces, but applying it to excited states faces a fundamental barrier: the cost of generating high-level quantum chemistry data. We overcome this challenge by developing machine-learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) that achieve multi-state multi-reference perturbation theory accuracy through various techniques, such as transfer, multi-state, and $Δ$-learning. Applied to the methaniminium cation, our highest-fidelity transfer-learning model uncovers its complete photodissociation landscape following S$_2$ photoexcitation. The comprehensive XMCQDPT2/SA(3)-CASSCF(12,12) electronic structure description captures all competing decay channels, including S$_1$ branching into photoisomerization and direct H$_2$-loss pathways. Our results show that the population dynamics generally depends on the MLIP model, correlating with its performance. At the same time, the introduction of MLIP-uncertainty corrections based on the predictions of an ensemble of models brings different approaches into agreement, validating this metric as essential for reliable dynamics. To interpret the population dynamics, we introduce a wavepacket oscillation model - a mechanistically transparent, power-law kinetics framework that extracts state-specific lifetimes directly from first-principles simulations. The model quantitatively reproduces the ultrafast decay, creating a direct link between quantum transition probabilities and classical rate constants. The kinetic fits yield channel-specific lifetimes, supporting the recently discovered photochemical pathway mediated by a novel $σπ^*/S_0$ conical intersection.
We have investigated the photodynamics of $β$-D-glucose employing our field-induced surface hopping method (FISH), which allows us to simulate the coupled electron-nuclear dynamics, including explicitly nonadiabatic effects and light-induced excitation. Our results reveal that from the initially populated S$_{1}$ and S$_{2}$ states, glucose returns nonradiatively to the ground state within about 200 fs. This takes place mainly via conical intersections (CIs) whose geometries in most cases involve the elongation of a single O-H bond, while in some instances ring-opening due to dissociation of a…
Heteroatom Position Controls Ultrafast Photodynamics of Oxazole and Isoxazole
University of Missouri（密苏里大学）；Kansas State University（堪萨斯州立大学）；SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory（斯坦福直线加速器中心）；University of Nebraska-Lincoln（内布拉斯加大学林肯分校）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）
Conventional approaches to probing ultrafast molecular dynamics rely on the use of synchronized laser pulses with a well-defined time delay. Typically, a pump pulse excites a wavepacket in the molecule. A subsequent probe pulse can then dissociates or ionizes the molecule, and measurement of the molecular fragments provides information about where the wavepacket was for each time delay. In this work, we propose to exploit the ultrafast nuclear-position-dependent emission obtained due to large light-matter coupling in plasmonic nanocavities to image wavepacket dynamics using only a single pump …
We show how to emulate a conventional pump-probe scheme using a single frequency-chirped ultrashort UV pulse to obtain a time-resolved image of molecular ultrafast dynamics. The chirp introduces a spectral phase in time that encodes the delay between the pump and the probe frequencies contained in the pulse. By comparing the results of full dimensional ab initio calculations for the H$^+_2$ molecule with those of a simple sequential model, we demonstrate that, by tuning the chirp parameter, two-photon energy-differential ionization probabilities directly map the wave packet dynamics generated …
The rates and outcomes of virtually all photophysical and photochemical processes are determined by Conical Intersections. These are regions of degeneracy between electronic states on the nuclear landscape of molecules where electrons and nuclei evolve on comparable timescales and become strongly coupled, enabling radiationless relaxation channels upon optical excitation. Due to their ultrafast nature and vast complexity, monitoring Conical Intersections experimentally is an open challenge. We present a simulation study on the ultrafast photorelaxation of uracil, which demonstrates a new windo…
Ultrafast wavepacket dynamics of electron-phonon-photon systems is studied by numerical calculations. When nonadiabaticity of electron-phonon systems is taken into account, Raman scattering process plays an important role in the dynamics of the system. We found that the interplay of the electron-phonon nonadiabaticity and the Raman scattering determines the wavepacket motion particularly in the vicinity of the conical intersection of adiabatic potential energy surfaces, which shows that we should consider this effect in order to reveal the photoexcitation/deexcitation process of materials in f…
Light absorption of myoglobin triggers diatomic ligand photolysis and spin crossover transition of iron(II) that initiate protein conformational change. The photolysis and spin crossover reactions happen concurrently on a femtosecond timescale. The microscopic origin of these reactions remains controversial. Here, we apply quantum wavepacket dynamics to elucidate the ultrafast photochemical mechanism for a heme--carbon monoxide (heme--CO) complex. We observe coherent oscillations of the Fe-CO bond distance with a period of 42 fs and an amplitude of $\sim$1 Å. These nuclear motions induce prono…
Rothe's Method for Quantum Dynamics in Atoms and Molecules with Gaussian Wavepackets
Hylleraas Centre for Quantum Molecular Sciences, Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo（奥斯陆大学化学系希莱拉索量子分子科学中心）；Faculty of Chemistry, University of Warsaw（华沙大学化学学院）；Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学化学与生物化学系）
Ongoing developments in ultrafast X-ray sources offer powerful new means of probing the com- plex non-adiabatically coupled structural and electronic dynamics of photoexcited molecules. These non-Born-Oppenheimer effects are governed by general electronic degeneracies termed conical in- tersections which play a key role, analogous to that of a transition state, in the electronic-nuclear dynamics of excited molecules. Using high level ab initio quantum dynamics simulations, we studied time-resolved X-ray absorption and photoelectron spectroscopy (TRXAS and TRXPS, respectively) of the prototypic…
Recording molecular movies on ultrafast timescales has been a longstanding goal for unravelling detailed information about molecular dynamics. We present the direct experimental recording of very-high-resolution and -fidelity molecular movies over more than one-and-a-half periods of the laser-induced rotational dynamics of carbonylsulfide (OCS) molecules. Utilising the combination of single-quantum-state selection and an optimised two-pulse sequence to create a tailored rotational wavepacket, an unprecedented degree of field-free alignment, $\langle \cos^{2}{θ_{2D}}\rangle=0.96$ ($\langle \cos…
Predicting the photodynamics of cyclobutanone triggered by a laser pulse at 200 nm and its MeV-UED signals -- a trajectory surface hopping and XMS-CASPT2 perspective
Wavepacket and Reduced-Density Approaches for High-Dimensional Quantum Dynamics: Application to the Nonlinear Spectroscopy of Asymmetrical Light-Harvesting Building Blocks
Conical intersections (CIs) have been widely studied using spectroscopic techniques. However, CIs have mainly been identified by rapid internal conversion transitions that take place after the photoexcitation. Such identifications cannot distinguish various types of intersections as well as to separate the actual intersection from an avoided crossing. In this paper, we investigate how ultrafast IR laser pulses can be utilized to stimulate nuclear dynamics revealing geometric phase features associated with CIs. We consider two low-dimensional nonadiabatic models to obtain optimal two- and three…
The advent of ultrashort soft x-ray pulse sources permits the use of established gas phase spectroscopy methods to investigate ultrafast photochemistry in isolated molecules with element and site specificity. In the present study, we simulate excited state wavepacket dynamics of a prototypical process, the ultrafast photodissociation of methyl iodide. Based on the simulation, we calculate time-dependent excited state carbon edge photoelectron and Auger electron spectra. We observe distinct signatures in both types of spectra and show their direct connection to C-I bond dissociation and charge …
The Pixel-Imaging Mass Spectrometry (PImMS) camera allows for 3D charged particle imaging measurements, in which the particle time-of-flight is recorded along with $(x,y)$ position. Coupling the PImMS camera to an ultrafast pump-probe velocity-map imaging spectroscopy apparatus therefore provides a route to time-resolved multi-mass ion imaging, with both high count rates and large dynamic range, thus allowing for rapid measurements of complex photofragmentation dynamics. Furthermore, the use of vacuum ultraviolet wavelengths for the probe pulse allows for an enhanced observation window for the…
Numerically exact simulations of quantum reaction dynamics, including non-adiabatic effects in excited electronic states, are essential to gain fundamental insights into ultrafast chemical reactivity and rigorous interpretations of molecular spectroscopy. Here, we introduce the tensor-train split-operator KSL (TT-SOKSL) method for quantum simulations in tensor-train (TT)/matrix product state (MPS) representations. TT-SOKSL propagates the quantum state as a tensor train using the Trotter expansion of the time-evolution operator, as in the tensor-train split-operator Fourier transform (TT-SOFT) …
We present a framework for simulating relaxation dynamics through a conical intersection of an open quantum system that combines methods to approximate the motion of degrees of freedom with disparate time and energy scales. In the vicinity of a conical intersection, a few degrees of freedom render the nuclear dynamics nonadiabatic with respect to the electronic degrees of freedom. We treat these strongly coupled modes by evolving their wavepacket dynamics in the absence of additional coupling exactly. The remaining weakly coupled nuclear degrees of freedom are partitioned into modes that are f…
