Ring polymer molecular dynamics fast computation of rate coefficients on accurate potential energy surfaces in local configuration space: Application to the abstraction of hydrogen from methane

To fast and accurately compute rate coefficients of the H/D + CH4 → H2/HD + CH3reactions, we propose a segmented strategy for fitting suitable potential energy surface (PES), on which ring-polymer molecular dynamics (RPMD) simulations are performed. On the basis of recently developed permutation invariant polynomial neural-network approach J. Li et al., J. Chem. Phys. 142, 204302 (2015), PESs in local configuration spaces are constructed. In this strategy, global PES is divided into three parts, including asymptotic, intermediate, and interaction parts, along the reaction coordinate. Since less fitting parameters are involved in the local PESs, the computational efficiency for operating the PES routine is largely enhanced by a factor of ∼20, comparing with that for global PES. On interaction part, the RPMD computational time for the transmission coefficient can be further efficiently reduced by cutting off the redundant part of the child trajectories. For H + CH4, good agreements among the present RPMD rates and those from previous simulations as well as experimental results are found. For D + CH4, on the other hand, qualitative agreement between present RPMD and experimental results is predicted.