Equilibrium sizes of jellium metal clusters in the stabilized spin-polarized jellium model

Abstract

We have used the stabilized spin-polarized jellium model to calculate the equilibrium sizes of metal clusters. Our self-consistent calculations in the local spin-density approximation show that for an $N$-electron cluster, the equilibrium is achieved for a configuration in which the difference in the numbers of up-spin and down-spin electrons is zero or unity, depending on the total number of electrons. That is, a configuration in which the spins are maximally compensated. This maximum spin-compensation results in both the alternation in the average distance between the nearest neighbor ions and the odd-even alternations in the ionization energies of alkali metal clusters, in a good agreement with the molecular dynamics findings and the experiment. These suggest a realistic and more accurate method for calculating the properties of metal clusters in the context of jellium model than previous jellium model methods.