Spin‐Free quantum chemistry. XVIII. The unitary group formulation of the many‐electron problem

AbstractThe representation of an N‐electron Schrödinger Hamiltonian on an orthonormal, spin‐free (freon) orbital product space is exactly modeled by a second‐degree polynomial in the infinitesimal generators of the unitary group. Symmetry adaptation of the orbital product space with respect to the symmetric group yields Gel'fand states which provide base for irreducible represntations of the unitary group. These exist in closed form as, in consequence, does the representation of the model Hamiltonian in this same basis. We retain as physical only those states characterized by tableaux with no more than two columns for which the spin labelling is one‐half the difference in the lengths of the two columns. The unitary group formulation is equivalent to standard, number‐conserving, second‐quantized, many‐body theory.