Photo-induced 1,3-cyclohexadiene ring opening reaction: Ab initio on-the-fly nonadiabatic molecular dynamics simulation

By a newly developed algorithm to compute global nonadiabatic switching probability only using electronic adiabatic potential energy surfaces and its gradients, we could able to perform on-the-fly trajectory surface hopping molecular dynamics at the SA-CASSCF(14, 8)/6-31G* quantum level to investigate the photo-induced 1,3-cyclohexadiene ring opening reaction from 1,3-cyclohexadiene (CHD) to 1,3,5-hexatriene (HT). We found four conical intersection zones within three singlet low-lying electronic states, in which 1B/2A and 1A/2A are well known to be the most important conical intersection zones to govern dynamics of ring opening reaction. The present simulation gained insight into nonadiabatic dynamics in which 516 sampling trajectories out of 600 can switch back and forth between two involved potential energy surfaces not only at 1B/2A, but also at 1A/2A. This insight is the key to influence quantum yields and time scales of the ring opening reaction. We estimated time constants as 46 fs, 82 fs, and 120 fs, respectively for crossing 1B/2A and 1A/2A, and excited-state lifetime in comparison with corresponding experimental values 56 fs, 80 fs and 130 fs. We estimated quantum yield 0.47/0.53 to HT/CHD in comparison to experiment values 0.30/0.70 in the gas-phase and 0.41/0.59 in the condense-phase. Moreover, the present simulation within 600 sampling trajectories indicates that there is no five membered ring forming in agreement with experiment results and with prediction from the previous wave-packet simulation as a rare case.