A mixed quantum-classical molecular dynamics study of the hydroxyl stretch in methanol/carbon tetrachloride mixtures...

We present a mixed quantum-classical molecular dynamics study of the nonequilibrium hydrogen-bond dynamics following vibrational energy relaxation of the hydroxyl stretch in a 10 mol % methanol/carbon tetrachloride mixture and pure methanol. The ground and first-excited energy levels and wave functions are identified with the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the hydroxyl's adiabatic Hamiltonian and as such depend parametrically on the configuration of the remaining, classically treated, degrees of freedom. The dynamics of the classical degrees of freedom are in turn governed by forces obtained by taking the expectation value of the force with respect to the ground or excited vibrational wave functions. Polarizable force fields and nonlinear mapping relations between the hydroxyl transition frequencies and dipole moments and the electric field along the hydroxyl bond are used, which were previously shown to quantitatively reproduce the experimental infrared steady-state absorption spectra and excited state lifetime [Kwac, K.; Geva, E. J. Phys. Chem. B 2011, 115, 9184; 2012, 116, 2856]. The relaxation from the first-excited state to the ground state is treated as a nonadiabatic transition. Within the mixed quantum-classical treatment, relaxation from the excited state to the ground state is accompanied by a momentum-jump in the classical degrees of freedom, which is in turn dictated by the nonadiabatic coupling vector. We find that the momentum jump leads to breaking of hydrogen bonds involving the relaxing hydroxyl, thereby blue-shifting the transition frequency by more than the Stokes shift between the steady-state emission and absorption spectra. The subsequent nonequilibrium relaxation toward equilibrium on the ground state potential energy surface is thereby accompanied by red shifting of the transition frequency. The signature of this nonequilibrium relaxation process on the pump-probe spectrum is analyzed in detail. The calculated pump-probe spectrum is found to be in reasonable agreement with experiment, thereby providing further credibility to the underlying force fields and mixed quantum-classical methodology.