English

Fewest-Switches Surface Hopping with Combined Deep Learning Potential and Long Short-Term Memory Network Propagator for Simulating Realistic Photochemical Processes

Chemical Physics 2026-05-25 v2

Abstract

Fewest-switches surface hopping (FSSH) is the most popular method for simulating photochemical processes of molecular systems. Recently, we have constructed long short-term memory (LSTM) networks as a propagator for electronic subsystems in FSSH dynamics simulations. The collective results on Tully's three models have been reproduced satisfactorily. In the present work, we develop an extended LSTM-FSSH framework to simulate realistic photochemical reactions. The input features of LSTM as well as the training procedure are redesigned to represent high-dimensional nuclear degrees of freedom in an effective way. Equivariant neural networks are integrated with LSTM to build adiabatic potential energy surfaces in ground and excited states. Photoisomerizations of CH2NH\mathrm{CH_2NH} and azobenzene are simulated, showing that our new proposed LSTM-FSSH method can produce excited-state lifetimes and product yields accurately in comparison with conventional FSSH simulations as reference. Only 10 reference trajectories are required for training LSTM networks, and then a trajectory ensemble can be generated with very efficient LSTM-FSSH dynamics simulations to obtain collective results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.21703,
  title  = {Fewest-Switches Surface Hopping with Combined Deep Learning Potential and Long Short-Term Memory Network Propagator for Simulating Realistic Photochemical Processes},
  author = {Zhenxing Zhu and Diandong Tang and Lin Shen and Wei-Hai Fang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.21703},
  year   = {2026}
}

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SI included