Orbitals

Mikael Johansson:
 > On Tue, 27 May 2003, Jens Spanget-Larsen wrote:
 >
 > > And in principle, MOs are not physical quantities; they are model
 > > constructions, and as such they have no physical reality and they
 > > cannot be observed experimentally.
 >
 > Well, there is a lot of discussion in the literature on this topic.
 > A few good examples, biased towards my thinking, could be:
 >
 > [1] Stowasser and Hoffmann, "What Do the Kohn-Sham Orbitals and
 >     Eigenvalues Mean?", J.Am.Chem.Soc. 121 (1999) 3414-3420.
 > [2] Baerends, Theor.Chem.Acc. 103 (2000) 265-269.
 >
 > Have a nice day,
 >     Mikael J.
 >     http://www.helsinki.fi/~mpjohans/
 Dear Mikael,
 Yes, it is true, there has been some discussion on the status of the
 MO concept. But to me, there can be no doubt: In principle, orbitals
 are one-electron wavefunctions, and for a many-electron system, they
 do by definition NOT correspond to physical reality. However, they
 are extremely useful models, as we all know. The usefulness of the MO
 concept in rationalizing a lot of chemistry and spectroscopy
 sometimes leads people to think of MOs as physical quantities, rather
 than simplified models. Do you think my point of view is erroneous?
 Yours, Jens >--<
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