M. Messina et al., VARIATIONAL SOLUTIONS FOR THE THERMAL AND REAL-TIME PROPAGATOR USING THE MCLACHLAN VARIATIONAL PRINCIPLE, The Journal of chemical physics, 100(9), 1994, pp. 6570-6577
A new approximation to the propagator is presented. The approximation
as applied to the thermal propagator (coordinate space density matrix)
is obtained by using an analog of the McLachlan variational principle
for the solution of the Bloch equation. The approximation as applied
to the real time propagator is obtained by using the McLachlan variati
onal principle for the solution of the time-dependent Schrodinger equa
tion. The-approximate coordinate space density matrix has the same fun
ctional form of the high temperature limit of the density matrix, whil
e the approximate real time propagator has-the same functional form-as
the short time propagator. We present numerical results for the therm
al propagator for several test systems and compare these results to pr
evious work of Zhang, Levy; and Freisner [Chem. Phys, Lett. 144, 238 (
1988)], Mak and Andersen [J. Chem. Phys. 92, 2953 (1990)], and Cao and
Berne [J. Chem. Phys. 92, 7531 (1990)]. We also present numerical res
ults for: the approximate real time propagator for several test system
s and compare to the exact results and results obtained by Gaussian wa
ve packet propagation.