Formalism of collective electron excitations in fullerenes

TL;DR

This paper develops a formalism to describe collective electron excitations in fullerenes, highlighting the roles of surface and volume plasmons and their dependence on electron diffraction and angular momentum.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed theoretical framework modeling plasmon excitations in fullerenes as a spherical shell with finite width, accounting for coupled surface and volume modes.

Findings

Three plasmon modes dominate the differential cross section.

Electron diffraction influences plasmon interplay.

Angular momentum affects plasmon contributions.

Abstract

We present a detailed formalism for the description of collective electron excitations in fullerenes in the process of the electron inelastic scattering. Considering the system as a spherical shell of a finite width, we show that the differential cross section is defined by three plasmon excitations, namely two coupled modes of the surface plasmon and the volume plasmon. The interplay of the three plasmons appears due to the electron diffraction of the fullerene shell. Plasmon modes of different angular momenta provide dominating contributions to the differential cross section depending on the transferred momentum.