USE OF POPULATION LOCALIZED ORBITALS TO INTERPRET MOLECULAR-ORBITAL CALCULATIONS

An efficient and general method is derived to calculate population localised molecular orbitals (LMO's) from a given SCF eigenvector matrix, by reduction to an eigenvalue problem. Applications to both localised molecules (NH3 and C2H2) and delocalised ones (B2H6, C6H6 and butadiene) are discussed in some detail. It is shown that unequal occupation of atomic energy levels leads to non-orthogonal LMO's. The consequences of non-orthogonal atomic hybrid orbitals are discussed, formulas for their overlap in terms of atomic occupation numbers are derived and it is shown that the occupation numbers are connected to LMO atomic orbital coefficients by various sum rules. © 1979.