Amount of information present in the one-particle density matrix and the charge density Juan Carlos Ramı ´ rez, Julio Manuel Herna ´ ndez Pe ´ rez, Robin P. Sagar, and Rodolfo O. Esquivel Departamento de Quı ´mica, Universidad Auto ´noma Metropolitana, Apartado Postal 55-534, Iztapalapa, 09340 Me ´xico Distrito Federal, Mexico Minhhuy Ho ˆ and Vedene H. Smith, Jr. Department of Chemistry, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6 Received 5 September 1997; revised manuscript received 20 February 1998 The amount of statistical information present in the one-particle density matrix and its diagonal, the charge density, is probed by comparison of the Jaynes and Shannon entropies for molecular systems. Numerical results show that these information entropies are not equal but that there exists a correspondence between them. The entropies are also compared among members of isoelectronic groups, and it is shown that these quantities are sensitive to the chemical environment and may be used as measures of the degree of electron delocalization or localization within a chemical system. S1050-29479801210-4 PACS numbers: 31.15.Ew, 31.30.Jv I. INTRODUCTION The one-particle reduced density matrix ODMof an N -particle system may be defined in terms of the N -particle wave function as 1;1 ' =N 1,2, . . . , N *1 ' ,2, . . . , N d 2 ••• dN , 1.1 where the index denotes a combined spin and spatial coordi- nate of a particular electron. This quantity is of fundamental importance in quantum chemistry. Through it, all one- electron properties of the system may be calculated. In order to calculate the energy and other two electron properties, one needs the second-order reduced density ma- trix or 2-matrix, 1,2;1 ' ,2 ' = N 2 1,2, . . . , N *1 ' ,2' ,..., N d 3 ••• dN . 1.2 Clearly is related to by a simple reduction of variables; that is, one can integrate over d 2 in to obtain . Also, within the Hartree-Fock HFapproximation, the energy as well as other two electron properties may be formulated in terms of the ODM. The ODM may be expanded in a set of orthonormal spin orbitals i 1;1 ' = ij c ij i 1 j *1 ' , 1.3 and then diagonalized to yield 1;1 ' = j v j j 1 j *1 ' , 1.4 where the eigenfunctions j are the natural spin orbitals and the eigenvalues v j are the occupation numbers. In order to be N representable, the ODM should have occupation numbers that sum to N and lie in the range 0,11. Within the independent-particle model, these occupation numbers are either 0 or 1, which identifies (1;1 ' ) as idempotent. One may also consider an integration over the spin vari- ables of the ODM to obtain a spin-free charge-density matrix CDM r ; r ' = 1;1 ' s 1 =s 1 ' ds 1 , 1.5 where r is the spatial coordinate and s 1 is a coordinate that represents the spin variable, both of electron 1. There is a similar expansion of ( r ; r ' ) to Eq. 1.4, namely, r ; r ' = i n i i r i *r ' . 1.6 It is the diagonal of ( r ; r ' ) that corresponds to the charge density ( r ), r = i n i | i r | 2 , 1.7 where n i are the occupation numbers that lie in the range 0,2, of the natural orbitals i . Furthermore, the ODM is also important because it pro- vides a connection to other representations, among them the momentum space one. The ODM in position space is con- nected to the ODM in momentum space ˜ (1;1 ' ) by a Dirac- Fourier transform 2 ˜ 1;1 ' =2 -3 1;1 ' exp-ı p r - p ' r '  dr dr ' . 1.8 Although these two ODM’s are connected by this Fourier transformation, there is no rigorous mathematical relation- ship between ( r ) and its counterpart in momentum space ( p ) 3, since both densities overlook the nonlocal behav- ior in the respective spaces. The Dirac-Fourier relationship PHYSICAL REVIEW A NOVEMBER 1998 VOLUME 58, NUMBER 5 PRA 58 1050-2947/98/585/35079/$15.00 3507 ©1998 The American Physical Society