Symmetry Theory in Molecular Physics with Mathematica A new kind of
Prof. McClain has indeed produced "a new kind of tutorial book." It is written using the logic engine Mathematica, which permits concrete exploration and development of every concept involved in Symmetry Theory. The book may be read in your ha
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William Martin McClain
Symmetry Theory in Molecular Physics with Mathematica A new kind of tutorial book
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William Martin McClain Department of Chemistry Wayne State University 5101 Cass Avenue Detroit MI 48202 USA [email protected]
ISBN 978-0-387-73469-9 e-ISBN 978-0-387-73470-5 DOI 10.1007/b13137 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009933284 c Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Preface Different people have different attitudes toward Mathematica. Some very gifted people find its step-by-step pace to be an impediment to scientific thought. If you are one of those talented people, this book is not for you. It is written by a person who understands theory only when it leads to calculation, with every logical step under full public scrutiny. That is what Mathematica excels at. But Mathematica also permits a playful attitude toward theory, making possible little experiments and explorations that are usually left in a scientist's private notebook. These curiosity-driven excursions are an essential part of the creative process, which perhaps now, with Mathematica and with private websites, and in books like this one, can become a part of the public record of science. This book was originally intended as a concise compendium of group theoretic data and algorithms. The concise statements are indeed there, in the two Mathematica packages that are loaded at the top of every chapter. A true theoretician, versed in the Mathematica language, would need nothing else. But humans are not computers, and the development and exposition of the package materials takes time and space, and one thing led to another. I have tried to break the materials into lectures of fifty minutes length (if multiple examples are omitted). I remember with great loss those from whom I learned group theory. First, Prof. Andreas C. Albrecht taught it to his spectroscopic research students at Cornell. Afterwards, I was a post-doc with Prof. Cristopher Longuett-Higgins, Cambridge University, who pioneered the use of permutation groups in flexible molecule spectroscopy. And especially I remember Prof. Leo Falicov, Physics Department, University of California, Berkeley, who helped me
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