Instanton Theory for Nonadiabatic Tunneling through Near-Barrier Crossings

Many reactions in chemistry and biology involve multiple electronic states, rendering them nonadiabatic in nature. These reactions can be formally described using Fermi's golden rule (FGR) in the weak-coupling limit. Nonadiabatic instanton theory presents a semiclassical approximation to FGR which is directly applicable to molecular systems. However, there are cases where the theory has not yet been formulated. For instance, in many real-world reactions, including spin-crossover or proton-coupled electron transfer, the nonadiabatic crossing occurs near a potential-energy barrier. This scenario gives rise to competing nonadiabatic reaction pathways, some of which involve tunneling through a round-top barrier while simultaneously switching electronic states. To date, no rate theory is available for describing tunneling via these unconventional pathways. Here, we extend instanton theory to model this class of processes, which we term the "nonconvex" regime. Benchmark tests on model systems show that the rates predicted by instanton theory are in excellent agreement with quantum-mechanical FGR calculations. Furthermore, the theory offers new insights into multistep tunneling reactions and the competition between sequential and concerted nonadiabatic tunneling pathways.