The calculation of the thermal rate coefficient by a method combining classical and quantum mechanics

Abstract

We propose and test a method for computing flux–flux correlation functions (and thermal rate coefficients) which divides the degrees of freedom in two groups, one treated classically and the other quantum mechanically. The method is tested by applying it to a simple model for which we can also obtain exact results. The approximate method gives good results if the mass associated with the classical degrees of freedom exceeds 16 a.u.