Quantum Dynamics with Electronic Friction

A theory of electronic friction is developed using the exact factorization of the electronic-nuclear wave function. No assumption is made regarding the electronic bath, which can be made of independent or interacting electrons, and the nuclei are treated quantally. The ensuing equation of motion for the nuclear wave function is a nonlinear Schr??dinger equation including a friction term. The resulting friction kernel agrees with a previously derived mixed quantum-classical result by Dou et al., [Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 046001 (2017)], except for a pseudomagnetic contribution in the latter that is here removed. More specifically, it is shown that the electron dynamics generally washes out the gauge fields appearing in the adiabatic dynamics. However, these are fully re-established in the typical situation where the electrons respond rapidly on the slow time scale of the nuclear dynamics (Markov limit). Hence, we predict Berry???s phase effects to be observable also in the presence of electronic friction. Application to a model vibrational relaxation problem proves that the proposed approach represents a viable way to account for electronic friction in a fully quantum setting for the nuclear dynamics.