Polarization matrices in simple and transition metals

Full text: The polarization of an inhomogeneous electron gas within a metal due to electron-electron correlations is fundamental for the prediction of inelastic electron scattering experiments such as energy-lose measurements and Compton profile studies. Moreover, the polarization matrix serves as starting point for many advanced theoretical topics as quasiparticle band structures, self energies and realistic electron momentum densities. For this contribution, we calculated polarization matrices for alkali metals, as well as for the complete serves from potassium (atomic number 19) to zinc (30) including all 3d transition metals. The main topic of our work is to study how the polarization is influenced by the fast that the correlating particles are 'Bloch electrons'. These influences become visible in the polarization matrices by (i) deviations of their diagonal elements with respect to the 'homogeneous case', and by (ii) the appearance of non-diagonal elements. We obtained an excellent agreement for the simple metals Na, K and Rb with 'jellium results', and found remarkable deviations for Li and Cs. Moreover, our results show that the non-uniform character of the 3d transition elements depends sensitively on the number of d-electrons and the energetic position of the d-bands with respect to the Fermi energy. (author)