Topic summary
D orbitals
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Atomic orbital.
Each orbital in an atom is characterized by a set of values of three quantum numbersn, ℓ, and mℓ, which respectively correspond to an electron's energy, its orbital angular momentum, and its orbital angular momentum projected along a chosen axis (magnetic quantum number). The orbitals with a well-defined magnetic quantum number are generally complex-valued. Real-valued orbitals can be formed as linear combinations of mℓ and −mℓ orbitals, and are often labeled using associated harmonic polynomials (e.g., xy, x − y) which describe their angular structure.