Analysis of the trajectory surface hopping method from the markov state model perspective

We analyze the applicability of the seminal fewest switches surface hopping (FSSH) method of Tully to modeling quantum transitions between electronic states that are not coupled directly, in the processes such as Auger recombination. We address the known deficiency of the method to describe such transitions by introducing an alternative definition for the surface hopping probabilities, as derived from the Markov state model perspective. We show that the resulting transition probabilities simplify to the quantum state populations derived from the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, reducing to the rapidly switching surface hopping approach of Tully and Preston. The resulting surface hopping scheme is simple and appeals to the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. The computational approach is similar to the FSSH method of Tully, yet it leads to a notably different performance. We demonstrate that the method is particularly accurate when applied to superexchange modeling. We further show improved accuracy of the method, when applied to one of the standard test problems. Finally, we adapt the derived scheme to atomistic simulation, combine it with the time-domain density functional theory, and show that it provides the Auger energy transfer timescales which are in good agreement with experiment, significantly improving upon other considered techniques.