Sampling the time evolution of mixed quantum-classical systems

Abstract

Quantum mechanics is not logically closed with respect to the classical world. Its formalism unfolds as the quantization of a sub-set of classical Hamiltonians. The interpretation of quantum theory in terms of the measurement process inevitably requires to deal with systems composed by a mixture of both classical and quantum degrees of freedom. Moreover,  when energy can flow between the quantum and classical degrees of freedom (i.e., in the case of nonadiabatic dynamics),  there are more theoretical difficulties in order to obtain a fully consistent quantum-classical formalism. In order to perform calculations, one can renounce to the usual Lie algebraic structure of well-established physical theories, adopt non-Hamiltonian brackets, and obtain a formalism for the dynamics and statistics of quantum-classical systems that has an affordable computational complexity. Recent progress in the algorithms for the sampling of nonadiabatic dynamics of quantum-classical systems at long time is reviewed here.