The charge of an atom is the sum of its nuclear charges (protons and electrons). If a atom is neutral, does it mean it does not have an net electric field?
I thought about this a lot, here is some of what I found. I am not sure what the right answer is because of conflicting information I found on the internet.
In an H atom, the electric fields of the proton and electron can't symmetrically cancel out, so it would to have a partial net electric field. Another example is that many atoms despite being neutral have exothermic electron affinities, which could be justified by an electric field. There are also many neutral covalent compounds (like water) which posses dipole moments and thus have a net electric field.
But I also read somewhere that neutral atoms do not actually have a net electric field, but rather the deformations of electron arrangements when atoms collide cause polarization.
If it is true that an neutral atom can have a net electric field, then what does the charge of an atom even indicate physically?
