Low energy electronic states in spheroidal fullerenes

TL;DR

This paper models low-energy electronic states in spheroidal fullerenes using a field-theory approach, revealing how slight deformations induce fine structure and additional modes in the energy spectrum.

Contribution

It introduces a Dirac equation framework with gauge fluxes to analyze spheroidal fullerenes, highlighting the effects of deformation on electronic states.

Findings

Deformation causes fine structure in energy spectrum.

Two quasi-zero modes emerge in spheroidal fullerenes.

Level splitting occurs due to spheroidal deformation.

Abstract

The field-theory model is proposed to study the electronic states near the Fermi energy in spheroidal fullerenes. The low energy electronic wavefunctions obey a two-dimensional Dirac equation on a spheroid with two kinds of gauge fluxes taken into account. The first one is so-called K spin flux which describes the exchange of two different Dirac spinors in the presence of a conical singularity. The second flux (included in a form of the Dirac monopole field) is a variant of the effective field approximation for elastic flow due to twelve disclination defects through the surface of a spheroid. We consider the case of a slightly elliptically deformed sphere which allows us to apply the perturbation scheme. It is shown exactly how a small deformation of spherical fullerenes provokes an appearance of fine structure in the electronic energy spectrum as compared to the spherical case. In particular, two quasi-zero modes in addition to the true zero mode are predicted to emerge in spheroidal fullerenes. An additional 'hyperfine' splitting of the levels (except the quasi-zero-mode states) is found.