A Brief Review of Elementary Quantum Chemistry

C. David Sherrill
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Georgia Institute of Technology

Last Revised on 27 January 2001

• Contents
• The Motivation for Quantum Mechanics
  • The Ultraviolet Catastrophe
  • The Photoelectric Effect
  • Quantization of Electronic Angular Momentum
  • Wave-Particle Duality
• The Schrödinger Equation
  • The Time-Independent Schrödinger Equation
  • The Time-Dependent Schrödinger Equation
• Mathematical Background
  • Operators
    • Operators and Quantum Mechanics
    • Basic Properties of Operators
    • Linear Operators
    • Eigenfunctions and Eigenvalues
    • Hermitian Operators
    • Unitary Operators
  • Commutators in Quantum Mechanics
  • Linear Vector Spaces in Quantum Mechanics
• Postulates of Quantum Mechanics
• Some Analytically Soluble Problems
  • The Particle in a Box
  • The Harmonic Oscillator
  • The Rigid Rotor
  • The Hydrogen Atom
• Approximate Methods
  • Perturbation Theory
  • The Variational Method
• Molecular Quantum Mechanics
  • The Molecular Hamiltonian
  • The Born-Oppenheimer Approximation
  • Separation of the Nuclear Hamiltonian
• Solving the Electronic Eigenvalue Problem
  • The Nature of Many-Electron Wavefunctions
  • Matrix Mechanics
• Bibliography
• About this document ...

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David Sherrill 2006-08-15