The sexy and messy parts of realistic photoexcited dynamics: motion, decoherence, and going beyond Marcus theory

Program Description
In this talk, I will review the simplest surface-hopping approach for how we should intuitively model photo-excited dynamics in the condensed phase. For most of the talk, I will focus on gas-phase and solution-phase phenomena, and I will show how one can treat the complicated dance between electrons and nuclei and why this dance reduces to Marcus theory in the simplest limit;  I will also highlight how decoherence arises and where time-irreversibility comes from. My model systems will be organic chromophores which undergo electron and energy transfer. Briefly, at the end of the talk, I will discuss nonadiabatic dynamics near metal surfaces where many open, fundamental questions remain unanswered, in particular because the electronic dynamics cannot be easily modeled with modern theoretical approaches and new experiments are needed.\