Structure and energetics of helium adsorption on nanosurfaces

Abstract

The ground and excited state properties of small helium clusters, 4He_N, containing nanoscale (~3-10 Angstroms) planar aromatic molecules have been studied with quantum Monte Carlo methods. Ground state structures and energies are obtained from importance-sampled, rigid-body diffusion Monte Carlo. Excited state energies due to helium vibrational motion are evaluated using the projection operator, imaginary time spectral evolution technique. We examine the adsorption of N helium atoms (N less than or equal to 24) on a series of planar aromatic molecules (benzene, naphthalene, anthracene, tetracene, phthalocyanine). The first layer of helium atoms is well-localized on the molecule surface, and we find well-defined localized excitations due to in-plane vibrational motion of helium on the molecule surface. We discuss the implications of these confined excitations for the molecule spectroscopy.