Description of tunneling with the help of coupled frozen Gaussians

A previous initial value coherent state representation is applied to Gaussi an wave packet propagation on one-dimensional and two-dimensional double we ll potentials. The method uses a basis of trajectory guided frozen Gaussian coherent states, sampled from a Monte Carlo ensemble, for numerical soluti ons of the quantum time dependent integro-differential Schrodinger equation . Accurate tunneling splittings are obtained. Comparisons are also made wit h corresponding results obtained by the Herman-Kluk semiclassical initial v alue representation wave packet method. (C) 2001 American Institute of Phys ics.