Ab Initio Surface-Hopping Simulation of Femtosecond Transient-Absorption Pump–Probe Signals of Nonadiabatic Excited-State Dynamics Using the Doorway–Window Representation

An ab initio theoretical framework for the simulation of femtosecond time-resolved transient absorption (TA) pump–probe (PP) spectra with quasi-classical trajectories is presented. The simulations are based on the classical approximation to the doorway–window (DW) representation of third-order four-wave-mixing signals. The DW formula accounts for the finite duration and spectral shape of the pump and probe pulses. In the classical DW formalism, classical trajectories are stochastically sampled from a positive definite doorway distribution, and the signals are evaluated by averaging over a positive definite window distribution. Nonadiabatic excited-state dynamics is described by a stochastic surface-hopping algorithm. The method has been implemented for the pyrazine molecule with the second-order algebraic-diagrammatic construction (ADC(2)) ab initio electronic-structure method. The methodology is illustrated by ab initio simulations of the ground-state bleach, stimulated emission, and excited-state absorption contributions to the TA PP spectrum of gas-phase pyrazine.