The radial behavior of the average local ionization energy Ī(r) has been investigated for the atoms He–Kr, using ab initio Hartree–Fock atomic wave functions. Ī(r) is found to decrease in a stepwise manner with the inflection points serving effectively to define boundaries between electronic shells. There is a good inverse correlation between polarizability and the ionization energy in the outermost region of the atom, suggesting that Ī(r) may be a meaningful measure of local polarizabilities in atoms and molecules.
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