Variational wave packet method for dissipative photodesorption problems

A recently introduced variational wave packet method to integrate the time-dependent Liouville–von Neumann equation for open quantum systems is adapted here for one- and two-dimensional models describing the photodesorption of a neutral molecule from a dissipative metal surface. By comparison to benchmark results, we find that any quantities of interest can be converged with any desired accuracy within the variational wave packet scheme. The method is general, shows uniform convergence properties and is computational efficient.