Stiefel and Grassmann manifolds in Quantum Chemistry

Abstract: We establish geometric properties of Stiefel and Grassmann manifolds which arise in relation to Slater type variational spaces in many-particle Hartree-Fock theory and beyond. In particular, we prove that they are analytic homogeneous spaces and submanifolds of the space of bounded operators on the single-particle Hilbert space. As a by-product we obtain that they are complete Finsler manifolds. These geometric properties underpin state-of-the-art results on existence of solutions to Hartree-Fock type equations.