Coulomb operator

The Coulomb operator, named after Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, is a quantum mechanical operator used in the field of quantum chemistry. Specifically, it is a term found in the Fock operator. It is defined as:

J ^ j ( 1 ) f ( 1 ) = f ( 1 ) ∫ | φ j ( 2 ) | 2 1 r 12 d v 2

where

J ^ j ( 1 ) is the one-electron Coulomb operator defining the repulsion resulting from electron j,

f(1) is a one-electron wavefunction being acted upon by the Coulomb operator,

φ j ( 2 ) is the one-electron wavefunction of the jth electron,

r 12 is the distance between electrons 1 and 2.