The Physics of the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation

A new derivation of the Born-Oppenheimer separation of electronic and nuclear motion is presented. The arguments used differ from those in earlier works in not being specially designed for molecules. Instead they aim at an intuitive understanding of the qualitative behavior of the low energy bound states of any, real or hypothetical, Coulomb interacting system of particles. The virial theorem is the starting point of the discussion. After a brief explanation of how it can be used to understand atomic structure it is applied to molecules. It is found that coordinates of collective and individual motion are natural coordinates for the approximate separation, rather than nuclear and electronic. It is also shown that it is the form of the interaction between the particles that is responsible for the separation; the smallness of m(el)/M(Nu) is irrelevant.