Natural spin-orbital functional characterized

The general setting of the electronic structure description given above refers to a complete (and thus infinite) basis set of one-electron functions (spin-orbitals) (f>nwave functions, an additional assumption is made, which is that the orbitals entering eq. (1.136) are taken from a finite set of functions somehow related to the molecular problem under consideration. The most widespread approximation of that sort is to use the atomic orbitals (AO).17 This approximation states that with every problem of molecular electronic structure one can naturally relate a set of functions y/((r). // = M > N -atomic orbitals (AOs) centered at the nuclei forming the system. The orthogonality in general does not take place for these functions and the set y/ is characterized... 

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