Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-chemistry-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2025/paper-1/a5/b/solution

Write for the orthonormal atomic orbital on numbered site , with every positive lobe pointing along . A normalized set of symmetry-adapted linear combinations is
Each has unit squared coefficient sum, and every distinct pair has zero inner product. The orbital representation therefore reduces to . For example, the fully symmetric site sum still has orbital symmetry because a orbital itself changes sign under operations that reverse . Ignoring that sign would assign the wrong representations.
Figure 1.
Original phase maps of the eight normalized para-quinone symmetry orbitals
. Filled circles label the phases of the lobes; the opposite lobe has the opposite phase. White circles mean zero coefficient. Areas scale with coefficient magnitude. Site numbers follow the source paper. Details.

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