Fragmentation of the photoabsorption strength in neutral and charged metal microclusters

TL;DR

This paper investigates the photoabsorption spectra of small sodium clusters, revealing multipeak structures in neutral clusters due to Landau damping and quantal effects, and predicts single-peak spectra for charged clusters.

Contribution

It provides a detailed theoretical analysis of the line shapes in neutral and charged sodium clusters, highlighting the role of Landau damping and quantal configurations.

Findings

Multipeak structures in neutral clusters explained by Landau damping.

Charged clusters predicted to have single dominant absorption peaks.

Quantal configurations significantly influence spectral line shapes.

Abstract

The line shape of the plasma resonance in both neutral and charged small sodium clusters is calculated. The overall properties of the multipeak structure observed in the photoabsorption cross section of spherical Na_8 and Na_20 neutral clusters can be understood in terms of Landau damping. Quantal configurations are shown to play an important role. In the case of charged Na_9+ and Na_21^+ clusters a single peak is predicted that carries most of the oscillator strength.