Energy Level Crossings in Molecular Dynamics

Abstract

Energy level crossings are the landmarks that separate classical from quantum mechanical modeling of molecular systems. They induce non-adiabatic transitions between the otherwise adiabatically decoupled electronic level spaces. This review covers results on the analysis of propagation through level crossings of codimension two, a mathematical justification of surface hopping algorithms, and a spectral study of a linear isotropic system.