A Mathematical Justification for the Herman-Kluk Propagator

Torben Swart, Vidian Rousse

Published 2007-12-05, updated 2007-12-21Version 2

A class of Fourier Integral Operators which converge to the unitary group of the Schroedinger equation in semiclassical limit $\eps\to 0$ is constructed. The convergence is in the uniform operator norm and allows for an error bound of order $O(\eps^{1-\rho})$ for Ehrenfest timescales, where $\rho$ can be made arbitrary small. For the shorter times of order O(1), the error can be improved to arbitrary order in $\eps$. In the chemical literature the approximation is known as the Herman-Kluk propagator.