Alternant hydrocarbon

An alternant hydrocarbon is any conjugated hydrocarbon system which does not possess an odd-membered ring. For such systems it is possible to undertake a starring process, in which the carbon atoms are divided into two sets: all the carbons in one set are marked with a star such that no two starred or unstarred atoms are bonded to each other. Here the starred set contains the highest number of atoms. When this condition is met, the secular determinant in the Hückel approximation has a simpler form, since cross-diagonal elements between atoms in the same set are necessarily 0.