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Updated: Jun 7, 2026

Spatial Separation of Molecular Conformers and Clusters
Published on: January 9, 2014
Spin-state splittings, highest-occupied-molecular-orbital and lowest-unoccupied-molecular-orbital energies, and
Erin R Johnson1, Weitao Yang, Ernest R Davidson
1School of Natural Sciences, University of California, Merced, Merced, California 95343, USA.
Abstract:
It is known that the exact density functional must give ground-state energies that are piecewise linear as a function of electron number. In this work we prove that this is also true for the lowest-energy excited states of different spin or spatial symmetry. This has three important consequences for chemical applications: the ground state of a molecule must correspond to the state with the maximum highest-occupied-molecular-orbital energy, minimum lowest-unoccupied-molecular-orbital energy, and maximum chemical hardness. The beryllium, carbon, and vanadium atoms, as well as the CH(2) and C(3)H(3) molecules are considered as illustrative examples. Our result also directly and rigorously connects the ionization potential and electron affinity to the stability of spin states.
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