Semiclassical approaches to controlling chemical reaction dynamics

Abstract

We propose to use semiclassical methods to treat laser control problems of chemical reaction dynamics. Our basic strategy is as follows: Laser-driven chemical reactions are considered to consist of two processes. One is the wavepacket propagation on an adiabatic potential energy surface (PES), and the other is the electronic transition between PES's. Because the latter process is mathematically equivalent to nonadiabatic transitions between Floquet (dressed) states, we can control such a process using the semiclassical Zhu-Nakamura theory for nonadiabatic transitions. For the former process, we incorporate semiclassical propagation methods such as the Herman-Kluk propagator into optimization procedures like optimal control theory. We show some numerical examples for our strategies. We also develop a semiclassical direct algorithm to treat the adiabatic propagation and nonadiabatic transitions as a whole.