Quantum tunneling splittings from path-integral molecular dynamics.

Abstract

We illustrate how path-integral molecular dynamics can be used to calculate ground-state tunnelling splittings in molecules or clusters. The method obtains the splittings from ratios of density matrix elements between the degenerate wells connected by the tunnelling. We propose a simple thermodynamic integration scheme for evaluating these elements. Numerical tests on fully dimensional malonaldehyde yield tunnelling splittings in good overall agreement with the results of diffusion Monte Carlo calculations.