Hund's rules 2026-10-18
Friedrich Hund's rules describe the usual ground-term ordering within an atomic electron configuration in the LS coupling regime. First maximize the total spin subject to the Pauli exclusion principle. Among the terms with that spin, maximize total orbital angular momentum . Within the resulting term, the lowest level has for a less-than-half-filled open subshell and for a more-than-half-filled one. These are ordering rules, not universal replacements for diagonalizing an arbitrary atomic Hamiltonian operator.
For two equivalent electrons, parallel spins give . Their spatial wavefunction must be antisymmetric; the highest allowed orbital projection with parallel spins is , giving . A subshell is less than half filled, so its lowest term symbol is , followed within that term by and . Closed subshells contribute zero total and .