Fullerenic solitons

Abstract

We study a modified non-linear Schroedinger equation on a 2 dimensional sphere with radius R aiming to describe electron-phonon interactions on fullerenes and fullerides. These electron-phonon interactions are known to be important for the explanation of the high transition temperature of superconducting fullerides. Like in the $R\to \infty$ limit, we are able to construct non-spinning as well as spinning solutions which are characterised by the number of nodes of the wave function. These solutions are closely related to the spherical harmonic functions. For small R, we discover specific branches of the solutions. Some of the branches survive in the $R\to\infty$ limit and the solutions obtained on the plane ($R=\infty$) are recovered.