Nonadiabatic quantum molecular dynamics with hopping. III. Photoinduced excitation and relaxation of organic molecules

Photoinduced excitation and relaxation of organic molecules (C2H4 and CH2NH + 2 ) are investigated by means of nonadiabatic quantum molecular dynamics with hopping (NA-QMD-H), developed recently [Fischer, Handt, and Schmidt, paper I of this series, Phys. Rev. A 90, 012525 (2014)]. This method is first applied to molecules assumed to be initially ad hoc excited to an electronic surface. Special attention is drawn to elaborate the role of electron-nuclear correlations, i.e., of quantum effects in the nuclear dynamics. It is found that they are essential for a realistic description of the long-time behavior of the electronic relaxation process, but only of minor importance to portray the short-time scenario of the nuclear dynamics. Migration of a hydrogen atom, however, is identified as a quantum effect in the nuclear motion. Results obtained with explicit inclusion of an fs-laser field are presented as well. It is shown that the laser-induced excitation process generally leads to qualitatively different gross features of the relaxation dynamics, as compared to the field-free case. Nevertheless, the nuclear wave packet contains all subtleties of the cis-trans isomerization mechanism as observed without a laser field.