Dielectric constants for hydrogen, helium, and one-electron ions

The average dielectric constant, polarizability, and polarized radius for hydrogen, helium, and several one-electron ions, which were calculated from quantum mechanics, are reported in this paper. We show that the polarization charge can effectively be considered to lie on the surface of a sphere of uniform dielectric constant. The radius of the polarized charge ranged from 0.298 to 1.190 Å while the dielectric constant ranged from 1.3 to 4.5. The trends observed for the variation of the dielectric constant and polarized radius with nuclear charge and also the electron-electron repulsion effects were as expected. The results presented in this paper show that the polarizability reflects the size and dielectric constant of the atom while the dielectric constant reflects the ease with which the electronic distributions can be distorted.