From chemistry-request@server.ccl.net Sun Jan 2 15:46:16 2000 Received: from ivory.trentu.ca (trentu.ca [192.75.12.103]) by server.ccl.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id PAA30223 for ; Sun, 2 Jan 2000 15:46:16 -0500 Received: from el1 ([204.225.13.50]) by trentu.ca (PMDF V5.2-32 #29543) with SMTP id <01JK8DTX5W4E000ULD@trentu.ca> for chemistry@ccl.net; Sun, 2 Jan 2000 14:37:57 EST Date: Sun, 02 Jan 2000 14:41:31 -0500 From: Errol Lewars Subject: HIGHER-ORDER SADDLE POINTS To: chemistry@ccl.net Message-id: <386FA9EB.489A@trentu.ca> Organization: Trent University MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (WinNT; I) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit 2000 Jan 02 Happy New Year! Hello, We know that a 1st-order saddle point (a transition state, with 1 imaginary frequency) connects two zero-order stationary points (two minima, each with 0 imag freqs). Question: (1) What does an nth-order saddle point connect? Does it always join 2n stationary points, each of order (n-1)? (2) Understandably, chemists concentrate overwhelmingly on minima and transition states. But has anyone ever shown much interest in higher-order saddle points? Thanks E. Lewars ===========