Semiclassical dynamics in Liouville space: Application to molecular electronic spectroscopy

A semiclassical theory of molecular dynamics and electronic spectroscopy, based on the propagation of a Liouville-space generating function (LGF) is developed. The method is particularly useful for treating the dynamics of systems, consisting of coupled classical and quantum degrees of freedom. Applications to intramolecular and intermolecular dynamics, correlation functions, and spectral line shapes in linear and nonlinear optical measurements are developed. The electronic absorption line shapes and Raman excitation profiles of model anharmonic molecules at finite temperatures are calculated as a demonstration.