Closely Related Disciplines
Historically, the major field of application of theoretical chemistry has been in the following fields of research:
- Atomic physics: The discipline dealing with electrons and atomic nuclei.
- Molecular physics: The discipline of the electrons surrounding the molecular nuclei and of movement of the nuclei. This term usually refers to the study of molecules made of a few atoms in the gas phase. But some consider that molecular physics is also the study of bulk properties of chemicals in terms of molecules.
- Physical chemistry and chemical physics: Chemistry investigated via physical methods like laser techniques, scanning tunneling microscope, etc. The formal distinction between both fields is that physical chemistry is a branch of chemistry while chemical physics is a branch of physics. In practice this distinction is quite vague.
- Many-body theory: The discipline studying the effects which appear in systems with large number of constituents. It is based on quantum physics – mostly second quantization formalism – and quantum electrodynamics.
Hence, the theoretical chemistry discipline is sometimes seen as a branch of those fields of research. Nevertheless, more recently, with the rise of the density functional theory and other methods like molecular mechanics, the range of application has been extended to chemical systems which are relevant to other fields of chemistry and physics like biochemistry, condensed matter physics, nanotechnology or molecular biology.
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