Collision-induced polarizabilities of inert gas atoms

The use of polarizability densities to calculate collision-induced polarizabilities is investigated. One method for computing polarizabilities of inert gas diatoms employs atomic polarizability densities from finite-field Hartree-Fock calculations, together with classical equations for the polarization of dielectrics. It is shown that this model gives inaccurate values for both the local fields and the local response to non-uniform fields. An alternative method incorporating the same physical effects is used to compute the pair polarizabilities to first order in the interatomic interaction. To first order the pair contribution to the trace of the polarizability is negative at short range. The calculated anisotropy does not differ significantly from the DID value, whereas the polarizability density calculation gives a substantial reduction in the anisotropy. (author)