Semiclassical description of electronic supershells in simple metal clusters

Abstract

A semiclassical approach for calculating shell effects, that has been used in atomic and plasma physics, is applied to describe the electronic supershells in metal clusters. Using the spherical jellium model we give the analytical expression for the oscillating part of the binding energy of electrons as an explicit sum of contributions from supershells with quantum numbers 2n_r+l, 3n_r+l, 4n_r+l, ... This expression is written in terms of the classical characteristics of the motion of an electron with the Fermi energy in a self-consistent potential. The conditions under which a new supershell appears and the relative contribution of this shell are studied as a function of the cluster size and form of the potential. Specific calculations are performed for a square well.