Coulomb Operator
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The Coulomb operator, named after
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb Charles-Augustin de Coulomb ( ; ; 14 June 1736 – 23 August 1806) was a French officer, engineer, and physicist. He is best known as the eponymous discoverer of what is now called Coulomb's law, the description of the electrostatic force of att ...
, is a
quantum mechanical Quantum mechanics is the fundamental physical theory that describes the behavior of matter and of light; its unusual characteristics typically occur at and below the scale of atoms. Reprinted, Addison-Wesley, 1989, It is the foundation of a ...
operator used in the field of
quantum chemistry Quantum chemistry, also called molecular quantum mechanics, is a branch of physical chemistry focused on the application of quantum mechanics to chemical systems, particularly towards the quantum-mechanical calculation of electronic contributions ...
. Specifically, it is a term found in the Fock operator. It is defined as: : \widehat J_j (1) f_i(1)= f_i(1) \int ^2 \frac\,dr_2 where : \widehat J_j (1) is the one-
electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary charge, elementary electric charge. It is a fundamental particle that comprises the ordinary matter that makes up the universe, along with up qua ...
Coulomb operator defining the repulsion resulting from electron ''j'', : f_i(1) is the one-electron
wavefunction In quantum physics, a wave function (or wavefunction) is a mathematical description of the quantum state of an isolated quantum system. The most common symbols for a wave function are the Greek letters and (lower-case and capital psi (letter) ...
of the i^ electron being acted upon by the Coulomb operator, : \varphi_j(2) is the one-electron wavefunction of the j^ electron, : r_ is the distance between electrons (i) and (j) .


See also

* Core Hamiltonian *
Exchange operator In quantum mechanics, the exchange operator \hat, also known as permutation operator, is a quantum mechanical operator that acts on states in Fock space. The exchange operator acts by switching the labels on any two identical particles descri ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coulomb Operator Quantum chemistry Theoretical chemistry Computational chemistry