Formulation of transition dipole gradients for non-adiabatic dynamics with polaritonic states

Abstract

A general formulation of the strong coupling between photons confined in a cavity and molecular electronic states is developed for the state-interaction state-average spin-restricted ensemble-referenced Kohn–Sham method. The light–matter interaction is included in the Jaynes–Cummings model, which requires the derivation and implementation of the analytical derivatives of the transition dipole moments between the molecular electronic states. The developed formalism is tested in the simulations of the nonadiabatic dynamics in the polaritonic states resulting from the strong coupling between the cavity photon mode and the ground and excited states of the penta-2,4-dieniminium cation, also known as PSB3. Comparison with the field-free simulations of the excited-state decay dynamics in PSB3 reveals that the light–matter coupling can considerably alter the decay dynamics by increasing the excited state lifetime and hindering photochemically induced torsion about the C=C double bonds of PSB3. The necessity of obtaining analytical transition dipole gradients for the accurate propagation of the dynamics is underlined.