The Influence of a Pitchfork Bifurcation of the Critical Points of a Symmetric Caldera Potential Energy Surface on Dynamical Matching

Abstract

Many organic chemical reactions are governed by potential energy surfaces that have a region with the topographical features of a caldera. If the caldera has a symmetry then trajectories transiting the caldera region are observed to exhibit a phenomenon that is referred to as dynamical matching. Dynamical matching is a constraint that restricts the way in which a trajectory can exit the caldera based solely on how it enters the caldera. In this paper we show that bifurcations of the critical points of the caldera potential energy surface can destroy dynamical matching even when the symmetry of the caldera is not affected by the bifurcation.

11 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Nonstatistical dynamics on the caldera
• The Dynamical Matching Mechanism in Phase Space for Caldera-Type Potential Energy Surfaces

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The Nature of Reactive and Non-reactive Trajectories for a Three Dimensional Caldera Potential Energy Surface
• The bifurcations of the critical points and the role of the depth in a symmetric Caldera potential energy surface
• Phase space transport in a symmetric Caldera potential with three index-1 saddles and no minima
• Bifurcation of Dividing Surfaces Constructed from Period-Doubling Bifurcations of Periodic Orbits in a Caldera Potential Energy Surface
• Influence of low frequency modes on dynamical concertedness in double proton transfer dynamics