Electrostatic representations of molecular groups

The treatment of electrostatic interactions between molecular groups is based on quantum mechanical electron density distributions. A general method is suggested using tesseral harmonic multipole expansions and representing each set of point multipoles by a cluster of discrete charges small with respect to atomic dimensions. The procedure is carried out for the amino group with an electron density derived from the wave function of ammonia. We evaluate the optical rotation of two aminopyrrolidones as a test case. Expansions are compared for several approximate wave functions for ammonia.