In this video of benzene orbitals, a lot of different orbitals are presented. Even orbitals that, I assume, could never be occupied. What is the purpose of calculating all these orbitals? Isn't all the chemical information needed (bonding, reactions) coming from the HOMO and LUMO (FMO theory)?
Here is an image of a few of the orbitals shown in the video:
Energy diagram of the molecular orbitals explored for the D6h structure (left) and the D3h distorted geometry (right)
(from David Casanova and Pere Alemany, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2010, 12, 15523-15529. DOI:10.1039/C0CP01326A)
Answer
A practical answer: in most of molecular quantum chemistry, the cost of obtaining unoccupied ("virtual") orbitals is next to nothing because of the algorithms involved. In short, one diagonalizes some matrix (i.e. finding eigenvalues and eigenfunctions, which are the orbital energies and orbitals) and the virtual orbitals are usually delivered anyway.
A more theoretical answer: While a lot of chemistry involves only the ground state, there is UV/vis spectroscopy and photochemistry. For those fields, virtual orbitals are immensely useful, because they will be used for the description of the electronic transitions that happen in those fields. These transitions are not necessarily between HOMO and LUMO because of symmetry, energy scales involved etc.
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