Powerful effective one-electron Hamiltonian for describing many-atom interacting systems

In this paper, we present an alternative way to build the effective one-electron picture of a many-atom interacting system. By simplifying the many-body general problem we present two different options for the bond-pair model Hamiltonian. We have found that the successive approximations in order to achieve the effective description have a dramatic influence on the result. Thus, only the model that introduces the correct renormalization in the diagonal term due to the overlap is able to reproduce, even in a quantitative fashion, the main properties of simple homonuclear diatomic molecules. The success of the model resides in the accurate definitions (free of parametrization) of the Hamiltonian terms, which, therefore, could be used to describe more complex interacting systems such as polyatomic molecules, adsorbed species, or atoms scattered by a surface