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in QM the spherical harmonics are more of a basis space for electronic state and not the actual electronic state, right? So does that mean there are other ways
by dustingetz 2y ago
in QM the spherical harmonics are more of a basis space for electronic state and not the actual electronic state, right? So does that mean there are other ways to think about electron configurations that satisfy Shrodinger etc?
- rsfern 2y agoYes - for example when modeling solid materials it’s common to use a plane wave basis set for the electronic wave function instead of atomic orbitals
- pletnes 2y agoSpherical harmonics are exact solutions to electronic states for hydrogen-«style» atoms.
- evanb 2y ago... for the angular dependence; there is also radial dependence.