Quantum tunneling splittings from path-integral molecular dynamics

摘要

We illustrate how path-integral molecular dynamics can be used to calculate ground-state tunnelling splittings in molecules or clusters. The method obtains the splittings from ratios of density matrix elements between the degenerate wells connected by the tunnelling. We propose a simple thermodynamic integration scheme for evaluating these elements. Numerical tests on fully dimensional malonaldehyde yield tunnelling splittings in good overall agreement with the results of diffusion Monte Carlo calculations. (C) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.