Magnetic susceptibility of insulators from first principles.

We present an ab initio approach for the computation of the magnetic susceptibility χ of insulators. The approach is applied to compute χ in diamond and in solid neon using density functional theory in the local density approximation, obtaining good agreement with experimental data. In solid neon, we predict an observable dependence of χ upon pressure. 75.20.-g, 71.15.-m, 71.15.Mb Typeset using REVTEX