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We examine the performance of various time propagation schemes using a one-dimensional model of the hydrogen atom. In this model the exact Coulomb potential is replaced by a soft-core interaction. The model has been shown to be a reasonable representation of what occurs in the fully three-dimensional hydrogen atom. Our results show that while many numerically simple (low order) propagation schemes work, they often require quite small time-steps. Comparing them against more accurate methods, which may require more work per time-step but allow much larger time-steps, can be illuminating. We show that at least in this problem, the compute time for a number of the more accurate methods is actually less than lower order schemes. Finally, we make some remarks on what to expect in generalizing our findings to more than one dimension.
We develop an approach to solving numerically the time-dependent Schrodinger equation when it includes source terms and time-dependent potentials. The approach is based on the generalized Crank-Nicolson method supplemented with an Euler-MacLaurin expansion for the time-integrated nonhomogeneous term. By comparing the numerical results with exact solutions of analytically solvable models, we find that the method leads to precision comparable to that of the generalized Crank-Nicolson method applied to homogeneous equations. Furthermore, the systematic increase in precision generally permits making estimates of the error.
The validation and parallel implementation of a numerical method for the solution of the time-dependent Dirac equation is presented. This numerical method is based on a split operator scheme where the space-time dependence is computed in coordinate space using the method of characteristics. Thus, most of the steps in the splitting are calculated exactly, making for a very efficient and unconditionally stable method. We show that it is free from spurious solutions related to the fermion-doubling problem and that it can be parallelized very efficiently. We consider a few simple physical systems such as the time evolution of Gaussian wave packets and the Klein paradox. The numerical results obtained are compared to analytical formulas for the validation of the method.
The steady-state simplified Pn (SPn) approximations to the linear Boltzmann equation have been proven to be asymptotically higher-order corrections to the diffusion equation in certain physical systems. In this paper, we present an asymptotic analysis for the time-dependent simplified Pn equations up to n = 3. Additionally, SPn equations of arbitrary order are derived in an ad hoc way. The resulting SPn equations are hyperbolic and differ from those investigated in a previous work by some of the authors. In two space dimensions, numerical calculations for the Pn and SPn equations are performed. We simulate neutron distributions of a moving rod and present results for a benchmark problem, known as the checkerboard problem. The SPn equations are demonstrated to yield significantly more accurate results than diffusion approximations. In addition, for sufficiently low values of n, they are shown to be more efficient than Pn models of comparable cost.
In this Colloquium, the wavefunction-based Multiconfigurational Time-Dependent Hartree approaches to the dynamics of indistinguishable particles (MCTDH-F for Fermions and MCTDH-B for Bosons) are reviewed. MCTDH-B and MCTDH-F or, together, MCTDH-X are methods for describing correlated quantum systems of identical particles by solving the time-dependent Schrodinger equation from first principles. MCTDH-X is used to accurately model the dynamics of real-world quantum many-body systems in atomic, molecular, and optical physics. The key feature of these approaches is the time-dependence and optimization of the single-particle states employed for the construction of a many-body basis set, which yields nonlinear working equations. We briefly describe the historical developments that have lead to the formulation of the MCTDH-X methods and motivate the necessity for wavefunction-based approaches. We sketch the derivation of the unified MCTDH-F and MCTDH-B equations of motion for complete and also specific restricted configuration spaces. The strengths and limitations of the MCTDH-X approach are assessed via benchmarks against an exactly solvable model and via convergence checks. We highlight some applications to instructive and experimentally-realized quantum many-body systems: the dynamics of atoms in Bose-Einstein condensates in magneto-optical and optical traps and of electrons in atoms and molecules. We discuss the current development and frontiers in the field of MCTDH-X: theories and numerical methods for indistinguishable particles, for mixtures of multiple species of indistinguishable particles, the inclusion of nuclear motion for the nonadiabatic dynamics of atomic and molecular systems, as well as the multilayer and second-quantized-representation approaches, and the orbital-adaptive time-dependent coupled-cluster theory are discussed.
Couplings of a system to other degrees of freedom (that is, environmental degrees of freedom) lead to energy dissipation when the number of environmental degrees of freedom is large enough. Here we discuss quantal treatments for such energy dissipation. To this end, we discuss two different time-dependent methods. One is to introduce an effective time-dependent Hamiltonian, which leads to a classical equation of motion as a relationship among expectation values of quantum operators. We apply this method to a heavy-ion fusion reaction and discuss the role of dissipation on the penetrability of the Coulomb barrier. The other method is to start with a Hamiltonian with environmental degrees of freedom and derive an equation which the system degree of freedom obeys. For this, we present a new efficient method to solve coupled-channels equations, which can be easily applied even when the dimension of the coupled-channels equations is huge.