Orthogonal effective atomic orbitais in the topological theory of atoms

Abstract

A simple formalism has been developed permitting us to extract, from the molecular wave functions, the effective orthogonal atomic orbitais characterizing the actual state of the atom in the molecule within the framework of Bader's topological theory of atoms. This may give important conceptual connections between the SCF wave functions obtained in the large-scale ab initio calculations, or even at the Hartree–Fock limit, and the traditional atomic orbital picture. The method is based on some partial orthogonality properties of the non-orthogonal localized molecular orbitais constructed by requiring a maximal weight in the given atomic domain, or in another selected molecular fragment. (The use of such localized orbitais may also be of independent interest.) Key words: effective atomic orbitais, atomic orbitais from molecular wave functions, non-orthogonal localized orbitais, topological theory of atoms, Bader's theory of atoms in molecules.