Previous Issues

Department of Chemistry, University of Kuwait, P.O. Box: 5969, Safat, 13060, Kuwait

ABSTRACT

The spherical shell technique for the identification of the irreducible symmetries and appropriate basis functions of the group representations, generated by components of molecular structures, is applied to the analysis of normal modes. Direct identification of the symmetries of all molecular motions is shown to be a straightforward procedure, involving only the matching of central function symmetries with the possible displacements of atomic positions on the unit spheres through each group orbit on a structure. The symmetry coordinates as linear combinations of the displacements of atomic positions follow from the values of the appropriate spherical or surface harmonics at each of these positions in an orbit.5^th July 2008.