Electronic structure of an ion in liquid metallic lithium treated as a nucleus-electron mixture

A set of integral equations for determining the liquid and electronic ion structures in a liquid metal have been derived by treating a liquid metal as a nucleus-electron mixture. By these integral equations with the atomic number as the only input, an electronic excited state of an ion in a liquid metal can be determined in a self-consistent way with the ion and valence-electron density distributions around it. It is shown that the authors' integral equations lead to a liquid-state version of the spherical-solid model proposed by Almbladh and von Barth to treat the spectroscopic problem in a solid. The integral equations combined with Slater's transition state method are applied to evaluate the K-edge position of a liquid metallic lithium: the value 51.36 eV is obtained at 470 K, which is compared with the experimental one of 51.26 eV. Thus it is ascertained that their integral equations can determine precisely the electronic structure of an ion as well as the liquid structure without the use of any information other than the atomic number.