Exploring potential energy surfaces with gentlest ascent dynamics in combination with the shrinking dimer method and Newtonian dynamics

Abstract

We revisit the so-called gentlest ascent dynamics reaction path model for finding saddle points of any index in multidimensional potential energy surfaces. The variational nature of the method is analyzed in detail, and an algorithm for the integration of its equations of motion is proposed based on the optimization-based shrinking dimer method. By means of three different two-dimensional model potential energy surfaces, we argue that the combination of the proposed method with Newtonian (dissipative) dynamics could lead to a practical scheme for the exhaustive exploration of potential energy landscapes.