Dynamical pruning of static localized basis sets in time-dependent quantum dynamics

We investigate the viability of dynamical pruning of localized basis sets in time-dependent quantum wave packet methods. Basis functions that have a very small population at any given time are removed from the active set. The basis functions themselves are time independent, but the set of active functions changes in time. Two different types of localized basis functions are tested: discrete variable representation (DVR) functions, which are localized in position space, and phase-space localized (PSL) functions, which are localized in both position and momentum. The number of functions active at each point in time can be as much as an order of magnitude less for dynamical pruning than for static pruning, in reactive scattering calculations of H2 on the Pt(211) stepped surface. Scaling of the dynamically pruned PSL (DP-PSL) bases with dimension is considerably more favorable than for either the primitive (direct product) or DVR bases, and the DP-PSL basis set is predicted to be three orders of magnitude smaller than the primitive basis set in the current state-of-the-art six-dimensional reactive scattering calculations. © 2006 American Institute of Physics.