https://mazziotti.uchicago.edu/qcdictionary/p_terms/polarizability/index.html At first glance, one might assume that neutral materials do not interact in external electric fields. In reality, even in neutral materials, the electron cloud and nucleus will each independently react to an external magnetic field through slight deformations and reorientations to form a dipole moment on each atom within a material. The electron cloud will be shifted until the coulombic attraction between each electron cloud and its nuclei is equal and opposite the force of the external field pulling them apart. This results in a slight (but meaningful!) physical shift of the electron cloud away from its symmetric enclosure of the nuclei. The ease with which an electric field induces a dipole in a material is known as the polarizability. Hugo en-us