Nonadiabatic dynamics in the semiclassical Liouville representation: Locality, transformation theory, and the energy budget

In this paper, we revisit the semiclassical Liouville approach to describing molecular dynamics with electronic transitions using classical trajectories. Key features of the formalism are highlighted. The locality in phase space and presence of nonclassical terms in the generalized Liouville equations are emphasized and discussed in light of trajectory surface hopping methodology. The representation dependence of the coupled semiclassical Liouville equations in the diabatic and adiabatic bases are discussed and new results for the transformation theory of the Wigner functions representing the corresponding density matrix elements given. We show that the diagonal energies of the state populations are not conserved during electronic transitions, as energy is stored in the electronic coherence. We discuss the implications of this observation for the validity of imposing strict energy conservation in trajectory based methods for simulating nonadiabatic processes. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.