2012-03-21
10:15 at HCI J 574

Nonadiabatic Dynamics of Open Quantum-Classical Systems

Raymond Kapral

University of Toronto

Mixed quantum-classical methods, where a quantum subsystem is coupled to a classical environment, provide a means to study the dynamics of complex open quantum systems that cannot be studied easily by other means. The talk will focus on descriptions based on the quantum-classical Liouville equation for the evolution of such systems. The roles of quantum coherence and decoherence in the subsystem as a result of coupling to both deterministic and dissipative environments will be discussed. Simulations of the dynamics based on the evolution of ensembles of trajectories using various representations of the quantum subsystem states will also be described. The results will be illustrated by computations on a variety of model systems.