Electron-pair shell density approximation applied to inner and outer densities of atoms

Abstract

The shell density approximation to the electron-pair radial density of atoms is applied to the inner $D_< (r)$ and outer $D_> (r)$ densities, which are two components of the single-electron density $D(r)$. The inner and outer densities are found to be expressed by product sums of shell densities and shell distributions or their complements. The expressions clarify physical meaning of the two densities and give examples for constructing two-electron properties from single-electron properties. Examination of the 53 atoms He through Xe shows that the quantum similarity indices between the original and approximate densities, bounded by 0 (complete dissimilarity) and 1 (complete similarity), are never smaller than 0.99998 and 0.99987 for the inner and outer densities, respectively. The local nature of the shell density and the monotonically increasing property of the shell distribution are used to derive simple shellwise lower and upper bounds to $D_< (r)$ and $D_> (r)$ in terms of $D(r)$ and the numbers of shell electrons. Numerical tests of the bounds demonstrate their utility.