The understanding in science implies insights from several different points of view. Alternative modern outlooks on electronic structure of atoms and molecules, all rooted in quantum mechanics, are presented in a single text. Together these complementary perspectives provide a deeper understanding of the localization of electrons and bonds, the origins of chemical interaction and reactivity behavior, the interaction between the geometric and electronic structure of molecules, etc. In the opening two parts the basic principles and techniques of the contemporary computational and conceptual quantum chemistry are presented, within both the wave-function and electron-density theories. This background material is followed by a discussion of chemical concepts, including stages of the bond-formation processes, chemical valence and bond-multiplicity indices, the hardness/softness descriptors of molecules and reactants, and general chemical reactivity/stability principles. The insights from Information Theory, the basic elements of which are briefly introduced, including the entropic origins and Orbital Communication Theory of the chemical bond, are the subject of Part IV. The importance of the non-additive (interference) information tools in exploring patterns of chemical bonds and their covalent and ionic components will be emphasized.

The Quantum Information Theory (IT) perspective on entropic origins of the molecular electronic structure and chemical reactivity is examined in this book. The classical IT of Fisher and Shannon has already provided sensitive probes of the chemical bond patterns in molecules, generating tools for the bond spatial localization, formulating entropic measures of its overall multiplicity, and providing indices of the bond covalent/ionic composition. However, the amount of information carried by the particle distribution alone is not sufficient for a complete IT description of complex wavefunctions in molecular quantum mechanics, e.g., degenerate electronic states. The latter exhibit finite spatial phases and generate nonvanishing electronic currents. This monograph emphasizes the entropic chemical concepts due to the phase part of electronic states.

Chemical Reactivity in Quantum Mechanics and Information Theory introduces a thermodynamic-like description of molecular systems and provides an objective treatment of their fragments. The book formulates adequate entropic tools for probing in chemical terms and the electronic structure of molecules and rationalizing reactivity principles. It covers the information origins of chemical bonds, covalent/ionic composition, trends in molecular stability and reactivity, equilibrium polarizations and charge-transfer reconstructions of reactive complexes, as well as the phase/current promotions of molecular substrates. In addition, the book introduces a precise descriptor of molecular fragments and clarifies mostly intuitive semantics of several chemical concepts. Readers will find a precise and unbiased description of chemical reactivity phenomena in Donor-Acceptor systems in terms of quantum states and generalized concepts of Information/Communication theories.