Thomas Bartsch

Transition State in a Noisy Environment

Transition state theory overestimates reaction rates in solution because conventional dividing surfaces between reagents and products are crossed many times by the same reactive trajectory. We describe a recipe for constructing a time-dependent dividing surface free of such recrossings in the presence of noise. The no-recrossing limit of transition state theory thus becomes generally available for the description of reactions in a fluctuating environment.

Stochastic transition states: Reaction geometry amidst noise

Classical transition state theory (TST) is the cornerstone of reaction-rate theory. It postulates a partition of phase space into reactant and product regions, which are separated by a dividing surface that reactive trajectories must cross. In order not to overestimate the reaction rate, the dynamics must be free of recrossings of the dividing surface. This no-recrossing rule is difficult (and sometimes impossible) to enforce, however, when a chemical reaction takes place in a fluctuating environment such as a liquid. High-accuracy approximations to the rate are well known when the solvent forces are treated using stochastic representations, though again, exact no-recrossing surfaces have not been available. To generalize the exact limit of TST to reactive systems driven by noise, we introduce a time-dependent dividing surface that is stochastically moving in phase space, such that it is crossed once and only once by each transition path.

Transition state theory for laser-driven reactions

Recent developments in transition state theory brought about by dynamical systems theory are extended to time-dependent systems such as laser-driven reactions. Using time-dependent normal form theory, the authors construct a reaction coordinate with regular dynamics inside the transition region. The conservation of the associated action enables one to extract time-dependent invariant manifolds that act as separatrices between reactive and nonreactive trajectories and thus make it possible to predict the ultimate fate of a trajectory. They illustrate the power of our approach on a driven Henon-Heiles system, which serves as a simple example of a reactive system with several open channels. The present generalization of transition state theory to driven systems will allow one to study processes such as the control of chemical reactions through laser pulses.

Identifying reactive trajectories using a moving transition state.

A time-dependent no-recrossing dividing surface is shown to lead to a new criterion for identifying reactive trajectories well before they are evolved to infinite time. Numerical dynamics simulations of a dissipative anharmonic two-dimensional system confirm the efficiency of this approach. The results are compared to the standard fixed transition state dividing surface that is well-known to suffer from recrossings and therefore requires trajectories to be evolved over a long time interval before they can reliably be classified as reactive or nonreactive. The moving dividing surface can be used to identify reactive trajectories in harmonic or moderately anharmonic systems with considerably lower numerical effort or even without any simulation at all.

Chemical reactions induced by oscillating external fields in weak thermal environments

Chemical reaction rates must increasingly be determined in systems that evolve under the control of external stimuli. In these systems, when a reactant population is induced to cross an energy barrier through forcing from a temporally varying external field, the transition state that the reaction must pass through during the transformation from reactant to product is no longer a fixed geometric structure, but is instead time-dependent. For a periodically forced model reaction, we develop a recrossing-free dividing surface that is attached to a transition state trajectory [T. Bartsch, R. Hernandez, and T. Uzer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 058301 (2005)]. We have previously shown that for single-mode sinusoidal driving, the stability of the time-varying transition state directly determines the reaction rate [G. T. Craven, T. Bartsch, and R. Hernandez, J. Chem. Phys. 141, 041106 (2014)]. Here, we extend our previous work to the case of multi-mode driving waveforms. Excellent agreement is observed between the rates predicted by stability analysis and rates obtained through numerical calculation of the reactive flux. We also show that the optimal dividing surface and the resulting reaction rate for a reactive system driven by weak thermal noise can be approximated well using the transition state geometry of the underlying deterministic system. This agreement persists as long as the thermal driving strength is less than the order of that of the periodic driving. The power of this result is its simplicity. The surprising accuracy of the time-dependent noise-free geometry for obtaining transition state theory rates in chemical reactions driven by periodic fields reveals the dynamics without requiring the cost of brute-force calculations.

Chaotic dynamics in multidimensional transition states

The crossing of a transition state in a multidimensional reactive system is mediated by invariant geometric objects in phase space: An invariant hyper-sphere that represents the transition state itself and invariant hyper-cylinders that channel the system towards and away from the transition state. The existence of these structures can only be guaranteed if the invariant hyper-sphere is normally hyperbolic, i.e., the dynamics within the transition state is not too strongly chaotic. We study the dynamics within the transition state for the hydrogen exchange reaction in three degrees of freedom. As the energy increases, the dynamics within the transition state becomes increasingly chaotic. We find that the transition state first looses and then, surprisingly, regains its normal hyperbolicity. The important phase space structures of transition state theory will, therefore, exist at most energies above the threshold.

Persistence of transition-state structure in chemical reactions driven by fields oscillating in time

Chemical reactions subjected to time-varying external forces cannot generally be described through a fixed bottleneck near the transition-state barrier or dividing surface. A naive dividing surface attached to the instantaneous, but moving, barrier top also fails to be recrossing-free. We construct a moving dividing surface in phase space over a transition-state trajectory. This surface is recrossing-free for both Hamiltonian and dissipative dynamics. This is confirmed even for strongly anharmonic barriers using simulation. The power of transition-state theory is thereby applicable to chemical reactions and other activated processes even when the bottlenecks are time dependent and move across space.

Reaction rate calculation with time-dependent invariant manifolds

The identification of trajectories that contribute to the reaction rate is the crucial dynamical ingredient in any classical chemical reactivity calculation. This problem often requires a full scale numerical simulation of the dynamics, in particular if the reactive system is exposed to the influence of a heat bath. As an efficient alternative, we propose here to compute invariant surfaces in the phase space of the reactive system that separate reactive from nonreactive trajectories. The location of these invariant manifolds depends both on time and on the realization of the driving force exerted by the bath. These manifolds allow the identification of reactive trajectories simply from their initial conditions, without the need of any further simulation. In this paper, we show how these invariant manifolds can be calculated, and used in a formally exact reaction rate calculation based on perturbation theory for any multidimensional potential coupled to a noisy environment.

Communication: Transition state theory for dissipative systems without a dividing surface

Transition state theory is a central cornerstone in reaction dynamics. Its key step is the identification of a dividing surface that is crossed only once by all reactive trajectories. This assumption is often badly violated, especially when the reactive system is coupled to an environment. The calculations made in this way then overestimate the reaction rate and the results depend critically on the choice of the dividing surface. In this Communication, we study the phase space of a stochastically driven system close to an energetic barrier in order to identify the geometric structure unambiguously determining the reactive trajectories, which is then incorporated in a simple rate formula for reactions in condensed phase that is both independent of the dividing surface and exact.

Phase-space geometry of the generalized Langevin equation

The generalized Langevin equation is widely used to model the influence of a heat bath upon a reactive system. This equation will here be studied from a geometric point of view. A dynamical phase space that represents all possible states of the system will be constructed, the generalized Langevin equation will be formally rewritten as a pair of coupled ordinary differential equations, and the fundamental geometric structures in phase space will be described. It will be shown that the phase space itself and its geometric structure depend critically on the preparation of the system: A system that is assumed to have been in existence forever has a larger phase space with a simpler structure than a system that is prepared at a finite time. These differences persist even in the long-time limit, where one might expect the details of preparation to become irrelevant.