Performance evaluation of the symmetrical quasi-classical dynamics method based on Meyer-Miller mapping Hamiltonian in the treatment of site-exciton models.

The symmetrical quasi-classical dynamics method based on the Meyer-Miller mapping Hamiltonian (MM-SQC) shows the great potential in the treatment of the nonadiabatic dynamics of complex systems. We performed the comprehensive benchmark calculations to evaluate the performance of the MM-SQC method in various site-exciton models with respect to the accurate results of quantum dynamics method multilayer multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree (ML-MCTDH). The parameters of the site-exciton models are chosen to represent a few of prototypes used in the description of photoinduced excitonic dynamics processes in photoharvesting systems and organic solar cells, which include the rather broad situations with the fast or slow bath and different system-bath couplings. When the characteristic frequency of the bath is low, the MM-SQC method performs extremely well, and it gives almost the identical results to those of ML-MCTDH. When the fast bath is considered, the deviations exist between the MM-SQC and ML-MCTDH results if the high-frequency bath modes are improperly treated by the classical manner. When the so-called adiabatic renormalization was employed to construct the reduced Hamiltonian by freezing high-frequency modes, the MM-SQC dynamics can give the results comparable to the ML-MCTDH ones. Thus, the MM-SQC method itself provides reasonable results in all test site-exciton models, while the proper treatments of the bath modes must be employed. The possible dependence of the MM-SQC dynamics on the different initial sampling methods for the nuclear degrees of freedom is also discussed.