Arnout Jozef Ceulemans - Böcker

Chemists are used to the operational definition of symmetry, which crystallographers introduced long before the advent of quantum mechanics. The ball-and-stick models of molecules naturally exhibit the symmetrical properties of macroscopic objects. However, the practitioner of quantum chemistry and molecular modeling is not concerned with balls and sticks, but with subatomic particles: nuclei and electrons. This textbook introduces the subtle metaphors which relate our macroscopic understanding of symmetry to the molecular world. It gradually explains how bodily rotations and reflections, which leave all inter-particle distances unaltered, affect the study of molecular phenomena that depend only on these internal distances. It helps readers to acquire the skills to make use of the mathematical tools of group theory for whatever chemical problems they are confronted with in the course of their own research.

The second edition of this textbook provides a more elaborate explanation of several important group-theoretical concepts in quantum chemistry, such as: the bra-ket conjugation relation, the connection between point groups and isometries, the practical use of subduction tables, the eigenvalues of Cayley graphs, and the symmetry of Slater determinants. A new chapter introduces the application of line and plane groups to the properties of nanostructured low-dimensional molecular systems. In addition, several extra study problems are inserted to illustrate group theory at work in molecular science. The book is of great interest to advanced undergraduate and graduate students, enabling them to put the tools of group theory into practice when studying chemical problems of their own research. More experienced researchers will find in this book useful leads to the mathematical aspects of their subject.