Sun Xiang, Geva Eitan
Department of Chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1055, USA.
J Chem Phys. 2016 Jan 28;144(4):044106. doi: 10.1063/1.4940308.
The Garg-Onuchic-Ambegaokar model [J. Chem. Phys. 83, 4491 (1985)] has been used extensively for benchmarking methods aimed at calculating charge transfer rates. Within this model, the donor and acceptor diabats are described as shifted parabolas along a single primary mode, which is bilinearly coupled to a harmonic bath consisting of secondary modes, characterized by an Ohmic spectral density with exponential cutoff. Rate calculations for this model are often performed in the normal mode representation, with the corresponding effective spectral density given by an asymptotic expression derived at the limit where the Ohmic bath cutoff frequency is much larger than the primary mode frequency. We compare Fermi's golden rule rate constants obtained with the asymptotic and exact effective spectral densities. We find significant deviations between rate constants obtained from the asymptotic spectral density and those obtained from the exact one in the deep inverted region. Within the range of primary mode frequencies commonly employed, we find that the discrepancies increase with decreasing temperature and with decreasing primary mode frequency.
