Communication: Rate coefficients of the H + CH4 -> H-2 + CH3 reaction from ring polymer molecular dynamics on a highly accurate potential energy surface

The ring polymer molecular dynamics (RPMD) calculations are performed to calculate rate constants for the title reaction on the recently constructed potential energy surface based on permutation invariant polynomial (PIP) neural-network (NN) fitting [J. Li et al., J. Chem. Phys. 142, 204302 (2015)]. By inspecting convergence, 16 beads are used in computing free-energy barriers at 300 K <= T <= 1000 K, while different numbers of beads are used for transmission coefficients. The present RPMD rates are in excellent agreement with quantum rates computed on the same potential energy surface, as well as with the experimental measurements, demonstrating further that the RPMD is capable of producing accurate rates for polyatomic chemical reactions even at rather low temperatures. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC