Group Theory Applied to Chemistry [Paperback]

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.

This book helps readers 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. Includes exercises.Operations.- Function spaces and matrices.- Groups.- Representations.- What has quantum chemistry got to do with it?.- Interactions.- Spherical symmetry and spins.

From the book reviews:

The material in the book is organized into seven chapters. & In the end of the book, the reader will find solutions to problems, references and an index. & it provides a valuable source of information for motivated graduate students and researchers interested in applications of group theory in chemistry. (Yuriy V. Rogovchenko, zbMATH, Vol. 1304, 2015)

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 objectsls>