Uncovering the Geometry of Barrierless Reactions Using Lagrangian Descriptors

Transition-state theories describing barrierless chemical reactions, or more general activated problems, are often hampered by the lack of a saddle around which the dividing surface can be constructed. For example, the time-dependent transition-state trajectory uncovering the nonrecrossing dividing surface in thermal reactions in the framework of the Langevin equation has relied on perturbative approaches in the vicinity of the saddle. We recently obtained an alternative approach using Lagrangian descriptors to construct time-dependent and recrossing-free dividing surfaces. This is a nonperturbative approach making no reference to a putative saddle. Here we show how the Lagrangian descriptor can be used to obtain the transition-state geometry of a dissipated and thermalized reaction across barrierless potentials. We illustrate the method in the case of a 1D Brownian motion for both barrierless and step potentials; however, the method is not restricted and can be directly applied to different kinds of potentials and higher dimensional systems.