Polarizability as a local functional of the electron density

Expressions for the multipole polarizability and shielding factor for an atom are obtained using the model where the total electron energy is assumed to be a local functional of the electron density. This simple model correctly predicts the leading term in the 1/Z expansion of the polarizability. Further, the simple local density functional for the polarizability, when evaluated with ground-state Hartree-Fock densities, yields numerical values for atoms which are, in general, in reasonable agreement with those obtained from coupled Hartree-Fock theory.