On-the-Fly ab Initio Semiclassical Calculation of Glycine Vibrational Spectrum

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100

We extensively describe our recently established "divide-and-conquer" semiclassical method [M. Ceotto, G. Di Liberto and R. Conte, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 010401 (2017)] and propose a new implementation of it to increase the accuracy of results. The technique permits to perform spectroscopic calculations of high dimensional systems by dividing the full-dimensional problem into a set of smaller dimensional ones. The partition procedure, originally based on a dynamical analysis of the Hessian matrix, is here more rigorously achieved through a hierarchical subspace-separation criterion based on Liouville's theorem. Comparisons of calculated vibrational frequencies to exact quantum ones for a set of molecules including benzene show that the new implementation performs better than the original one and that, on average, the loss in accuracy with respect to full-dimensional semiclassical calculations is reduced to only 10 wavenumbers. Furthermore, by investigating the challenging Zundel cation, we also demonstrate that the "divide-and-conquer" approach allows to deal with complex strongly anharmonic molecular systems. Overall the method very much helps the assignment and physical interpretation of experimental IR spectra by providing accurate vibrational fundamentals and overtones decomposed into reduced dimensionality spectra.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Divide and conquer” semiclassical molecular dynamics: A practical method for spectroscopic calculations of high dimensional molecular systems

Liberto

Conte

Ceotto

2018

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100

“…Ab initio molecular dynamics was performed at harmonic ZPE at DFT-B3LYP level of theory with aVDZ basis set, in agreement with a previous semiclassical study of glycine. 47 For the test of the determinant of the monodromy matrix we used a threshold equal to 10 -2 . Furthermore, a well-established regularization technique for the monodromy matrix 65 was adopted to avoid discard of the trajectory before its scheduled end.…”

Section: Glycinementioning

confidence: 99%

Semiclassical vibrational spectroscopy with Hessian databases

Conte

Gabas

Botti

et al. 2019

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We report on a new approach to ease the computational overhead of ab initio "onthe-fly" semiclassical dynamics simulations for vibrational spectroscopy. The well known bottleneck of such computations lies in the necessity to estimate the Hessian matrix for propagating the semiclassical pre-exponential factor at each step along the dynamics. The procedure proposed here is based on the creation of a dynamical database of Hessians and associated molecular geometries able to speed up calculations while preserving the accuracy of results at a satisfactory level. This new approach can be interfaced to both analytical potential energy surfaces and on-thefly dynamics, allowing one to study even large systems previously not achievable.We present results obtained for semiclassical vibrational power spectra of methane, glycine, and N-acetyl-L-phenylalaninyl-L-methionine-amide, a molecule of biological interest made of 46 atoms.

“…80 With a careful choice of initial conditions, it is even possible to employ a single classical trajectory per sought spectral peak, via the Multiple Coherent State (MC SCIVR) approach. [81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90] Impressive results have also been obtained with the Thawed Gaussian approach. [91][92][93] Due to the floppy nature of the Zundel cation, in this work we focus on phase-space integration, that validates our use of single trajectories in Sec III F for a qualitative study of proton transfer.…”

Section: A Semiclassical Cartesian Propagatormentioning

confidence: 99%

Reduced rovibrational coupling Cartesian dynamics for semiclassical calculations: Application to the spectrum of the Zundel cation

Bertaina

Liberto

Ceotto

2019

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We study the vibrational spectrum of the protonated water dimer, by means of a divide-and-conquer semiclassical initial value representation of the quantum propagator, as a first step in the study of larger protonated water clusters. We use the potential energy surface from [Huang et al., J. Chem. Phys. 122, 044308 (2005)]. To tackle such an anharmonic and floppy molecule, we employ fully Cartesian dynamics and carefully reduce the coupling to global rotations in the definition of normal modes. We apply the time-averaging filter and obtain clean power spectra relative to suitable reference states, that highlight the spectral peaks corresponding to the fundamental excitations of the system. Our trajectory-based approach allows us for physical interpretation of the very challenging proton transfer modes. We find that it is important, for such a floppy molecule, to selectively avoid to initially excite lower energy modes, in order to obtain cleaner spectra. The estimated vibrational energies display a mean absolute error (MAE) of ∼ 29cm −1 with respect to available Multi-Configuration time-dependent Hartree calculations and MAE ∼ 14cm −1 when compared to the optically active experimental excitations of the Ne-tagged Zundel cation. The reasonable scaling in the number of trajectories for Monte Carlo convergence is promising for applications to higher dimensional protonated cluster systems.The Zundel cation is the most representative member of the family of protonated water clusters, towards which many computational efforts are being devoted, mainly motivated by a flourishing of experimental results, 11-16 and the request for higher accuracy. [17][18][19][20][21] In this respect, this molecule is a prototypical example that has been tackled by various approaches, given the great biological relevance of the charge transport mechanism in aqueous solutions. [22][23][24][25][26][27] On the experimental side, the vibrational spectrum of the Zundel cation has been investigated by infrared multiphoton photodissociation spectroscopy 28,29 and noble gases predissociation spectroscopy, in particular Argon and Neon. [30][31][32] The theoretical literature about the vibrational spectrum of the Zundel cation is quite vast, since its strong anharmonicity provides the ideal test-bed for theoretical methods. The PES computed at the level of coupled cluster theory and devised in Ref. 33, has been employed by a plethora of methods for vibrational calculations, such as vibrational configuration interaction (VCI), 34 diffusion Monte Carlo, 32,35 classical molecu-