On the calculation of induced electric and magnetic moments of atoms and molecules

We present a many-electron method for calculating first and second order perturbed wavefunctions due to external electric and magnetic fields, which identifies the important correlation effects for the response function a priori and calculates them variationally. It is accurate, economical and applicable to ground and excited states with the same ease. Thus, it presents a useful alternative to the well-known coupled Hartree-Fock methods. As an application of this method, we calculate the static electric dipole polarizability of the Be ground state. We find α_d = 5.49 ų in agreement with recent extensive calculations.