Generalized valence bond method definition

This article provides a comprehensive review of modem approaches to analysis of electronic wavefunctions. Diverse definitions of properties such as atomic charges, energies, and valences, bond orders and energies, specialized orbitals, and similarities of atoms and molecules are presented. The merits and shortcomings of these definitions are discussed, Particular emphasis is placed on rigorous interpretive tools which produce quantities that can be regarded as tme quantum mechanical observables. Because of their lack of generality, approaches to quantification of chemical concepts that are limited to certain classes of molecules or electronic stmcture methods (such as n -electron bond orders in Hiickel theory) are not mentioned. 

As explained in the preceding section, the bond index and the valency have definite physical meanings only when basis functions are orthonormalized. MOPAC satisfies this assumption(6), but general MO methods, including DV-Xa, don t satisfy it. Fortunately basis functions can be orthonormalized after MO calculation without any loss of accuracy, provided that all overlap integrals are known. 

This arbitrariness most clearly manifests itself in going beyond the scope of the HF approximation, as evidenced by a wide variety of definitions for molecular systems available in the literature for valences and bond orders in the case of post-Hartree-Fock methods for molecular systems [570,578-580]. In post-HF methods local characteristics of molecular electronic structure are usually defined in terms of the first-order density matrix and in this sense there is no conceptual difference between HF and post-HF approaches [577]. It is convenient to introduce natural (molecular) spin orbitals (NSOs), i.e. those that diagonalise the one-particle density matrix. The first-order density matrix in the most general case represents some ensemble of one-electron states described by NSOs... 

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