STATIC DIELECTRIC FUNCTION OF LIQUID LITHIUM

The static dielectric function, epsilon(q, 0), of liquid lithium was c alculated at four different temperatures, treating the liquid metal as a binary mixture of conduction electrons and ions. For the ions, a po tential of interaction derived from the neutral pseudo atom (NPA) meth od and the variational modified hypernetted chain (VMHNC) theory of li quids were used. For the electrons, the response function which includ es exchange and correlations obtained from the local field factor deri ved from the local density approximation (LDA) was used, in order to b e consistent with the NPA method. the results show that, at the temper atures for which the calculations were carried out, the behaviour of e psilon(q) is dominated by the ionic contributions.