Surprises in the Orbital Magnetic Moment and g-Factor of the Dynamic Jahn-Teller Ion C_{60}^-

TL;DR

This paper calculates the magnetic properties of the C60^- ion considering dynamical Jahn-Teller effects, revealing unexpectedly small spin-orbit splitting and a negative g-factor, with implications for magnetic resonance experiments.

Contribution

It provides a detailed theoretical analysis of the magnetic susceptibility and g-factor of C60^- accounting for dynamical Jahn-Teller effects, highlighting novel predictions about spin-orbit splitting and g-factor behavior.

Findings

Spin-orbit splitting is two orders of magnitude smaller than in carbon atoms.

The g-factor shows a field dependence in EPR conditions.

The ground-state g-factor is predicted to be approximately -0.1.

Abstract

We calculate the magnetic susceptibility and g-factor of the isolated C_{60}^- ion at zero temperature, with a proper treatment of the dynamical Jahn-Teller effect, and of the associated orbital angular momentum, Ham-reduced gyromagnetic ratio, and molecular spin-orbit coupling. A number of surprises emerge. First, the predicted molecular spin-orbit splitting is two orders of magnitude smaller than in the bare carbon atom, due to the large radius of curvature of the molecule. Second, this reduced spin-orbit splitting is comparable to Zeeman energies, for instance, in X-band EPR at 3.39KGauss, and a field dependence of the g-factor is predicted. Third, the orbital gyromagnetic factor is strongly reduced by vibron coupling, and so therefore are the effective weak-field g-factors of all low-lying states. In particular, the ground-state doublet of C_{60}^- is predicted to show a negative g-factor of \sim -0.1.