Basis functions for electronic structure calculations on spheres

We introduce a new basis function (the spherical Gaussian) for electronic structure calculations on spheres of any dimension D. We find general expressions for the one- and two-electron integrals and propose an efficient computational algorithm incorporating the Cauchy-Schwarz bound. Using numerical calculations for the D = 2 case, we show that spherical Gaussians are more efficient than spherical harmonics when the electrons are strongly localized.