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Microcanonical instanton theory offers the promise of providing rate constants for chemical reactions including quantum tunneling of atoms over the whole temperature range. We discuss different rate expressions, which require the calculation of stability parameters of the instantons. The traditional way of obtaining these stability parameters is shown to be numerically unstable in practical applications. We provide three alternative algorithms to obtain such stability parameters for non-separable systems, i.e., systems in which the vibrational modes perpendicular to the instanton path couple to movement along the path. We show the applicability of our algorithms on two molecular systems: H2 + OH → H2O + H using a fitted potential energy surface and HNCO + H → NH2CO using a potential obtained on-the-fly from density functional calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canonical instanton theory is a widespread approach to describe the dynamics of chemical reactions in low temperature environments when tunneling effects become dominant. It is a semiclassical theory which requires locating classical periodic orbits on the upside-down potential energy surface, so-called instantons, and the computation of second order quantum corrections. The calculation of these corrections usually involves a matrix diagonalization. In this paper we present an alternative approach, which requires to solve only linear systems of equations involving sparse matrices. Furthermore, the proposed method provides a reliable and numerically stable way to obtain stability parameters in multidimensional systems, which are of particular interest in the context of microcanonical instanton theory.