Schrodinger equation electrons

According to the Schrodinger equation, electrons in atomic orbitals also have quantized energies. Unlike in the Bohr atomic model, therefore, an electron s energy level is not the only characteristic of an orbital. 

The discussion in the previous sections assumed that the electron dynamics is adiabatic, i.e. the electronic wavefiinction follows the nuclear dynamics and at every nuclear configuration only the lowest energy (or more generally, for excited states, a single) electronic wavefiinction is relevant. This is the Bom-Oppenlieimer approxunation which allows the separation of nuclear and electronic coordinates in the Schrodinger equation. 

The mixed, v t — % notation here has historic causes.) The Schrodinger equation is obtained from the nuclear Lagrangean by functionally deriving the latter with respect to t /. To get the exact form of the Schrodinger equation, we must let N in Eq. (95) to be equal to the dimension of the electronic Hilbert space (viz., 00), but we shall soon come to study approximations in which N is finite and even small (e.g., 2 or 3). The appropriate nuclear Lagrangean density is for an arbitrary electronic states... 

Let us define x (R>.) as an n-dimensional nuclear motion column vector, whose components are Xi (R i) through X (R )- The n-electronic-state nuclear motion Schrodinger equation satisfied by (Rl) can be obtained by inserting Eqs. (12)... 

This makes it desirable to define other representations in addition to the electronically adiabatic one [Eqs. (9)-(12)], in which the adiabatic electronic wave function basis set used in the Bom-Huang expansion (12) is replaced by another basis set of functions of the electronic coordinates. Such a different electronic basis set can be chosen so as to minimize the above mentioned gradient term. This term can initially be neglected in the solution of the / -electionic-state nuclear motion Schrodinger equation and reintroduced later using perturbative or other methods, if desired. This new basis set of electronic wave functions can also be made to depend parametrically, like their adiabatic counterparts, on the internal nuclear coordinates q that were defined after Eq. (8). This new electronic basis set is henceforth refened to as diabatic and, as is obvious, leads to an electronically diabatic representation that is not unique unlike the adiabatic one, which is unique by definition. 

U(qJ is referred to as an adiabatic-to-diabatic transformation (ADT) matrix. Its mathematical sbucture is discussed in detail in Section in.C. If the electronic wave functions in the adiabatic and diabatic representations are chosen to be real, as is normally the case, U(q ) is orthogonal and therefore has n n — l)/2 independent elements (or degrees of freedom). This transformation mabix U(qO can be chosen so as to yield a diabatic electronic basis set with desired properties, which can then be used to derive the diabatic nuclear motion Schrodinger equation. By using Eqs. (27) and (28) and the orthonormality of the diabatic and adiabatic electronic basis sets, we can relate the adiabatic and diabatic nuclear wave functions through the same n-dimensional unitary transformation matrix U(qx) according to... 

This can be used to rewrite the diabatic nuclear motion Schrodinger equation for an incomplete set of n electronic states as... 

In the two-adiabatic-electronic-state Bom-Huang description of the total orbital wave function, we wish to solve the corresponding nuclear motion Schrodinger equation in the diabatic representation... 

Reactive atomic and molecular encounters at collision energies ranging from thermal to several kiloelectron volts (keV) are, at the fundamental level, described by the dynamics of the participating electrons and nuclei moving under the influence of their mutual interactions. Solutions of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation describe the details of such dynamics. The representation of such solutions provide the pictures that aid our understanding of atomic and molecular processes. 

The familiar BO approximation is obtained by ignoring the operators A completely. This results in the picture of the nuclei moving over the PES provided by the electrons, which are moving so as to instantaneously follow the nuclear motion. Another common level of approximation is to exclude the off-diagonal elements of this operator matrix. This is known as the Bom-Huang, or simply the adiabatic, approximation (see [250] for further details of the possible approximations and nomenclature associated with the nuclear Schrodinger equation). 

Substitution of Eq. (3) into the molecular Schrodinger equation leads to a system of coupled equations in a coupled multistate electronic manifold... 

It was stated above that the Schrodinger equation cannot be solved exactly for any molecular systems. However, it is possible to solve the equation exactly for the simplest molecular species, Hj (and isotopically equivalent species such as ITD" ), when the motion of the electrons is decoupled from the motion of the nuclei in accordance with the Bom-Oppenheimer approximation. The masses of the nuclei are much greater than the masses of the electrons (the resting mass of the lightest nucleus, the proton, is 1836 times heavier than the resting mass of the electron). This means that the electrons can adjust almost instantaneously to any changes in the positions of the nuclei. The electronic wavefunction thus depends only on the positions of the nuclei and not on their momenta. Under the Bom-Oppenheimer approximation the total wavefunction for the molecule can be written in the following form ... 

Whereas the tight-binding approximation works well for certain types of solid, for other s. items it is often more useful to consider the valence electrons as free particles whose motion is modulated by the presence of the lattice. Our starting point here is the Schrodinger equation for a free particle in a one-dimensional, infinitely large box ... 

In summary, separation of variables has been used to solve the full r,0,( ) Schrodinger equation for one electron moving about a nucleus of charge Z. The 0 and (j) solutions are the spherical harmonics YL,m (0,(1>)- The bound-state radial solutions... 

This Schrodinger equation relates to the rotation of diatomic and linear polyatomic molecules. It also arises when treating the angular motions of electrons in any spherically symmetric potential... 

The Application of the Schrodinger Equation to the Motions of Electrons and Nuclei in a Molecule Lead to the Chemists Picture of Electronic Energy Surfaces on Which Vibration and Rotation Occurs and Among Which Transitions Take Place. 

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