Dynamics of Gaussian Wigner functions derived from a time-dependent variational principle

By using a time-dependent variational principle formulated for Wigner phase-space functions, we obtain the optimal time-evolution for two classes of Gaussian Wigner functions, namely those of either thawed real-valued or frozen but complex Gaussians. It is shown that tunneling effects are approximately included in both schemes. (C) 2017 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).