[dustingetz]

in QM the spherical harmonics are more of a basis space for electronic state and not the actual electronic state, right? So does that mean there are other ways to think about electron configurations that satisfy Shrodinger etc?

[rsfern]

Yes - for example when modeling solid materials it’s common to use a plane wave basis set for the electronic wave function instead of atomic orbitals

[pletnes]

Spherical harmonics are exact solutions to electronic states for hydrogen-«style» atoms.

[evanb]

... for the angular dependence; there is also radial dependence.