A TIGHT-BINDING MODEL FOR THE OPTICAL-PROPERTIES OF AU55-CLUSTERS

We have computed the electronic structure and the imaginary part of the dielectric function of the Au55 cluster using a tight-binding model which takes into account size and boundary effects. Besides the Drude behavior, we obtain anomalous absorption peaks in the infrared region due to the breakdown of the selection rule DELTAk=0. Taking into account surface coating effects, the onset of the interband absorption above 2.5 eV results to be red shifted, in agreement with the experimental data. As a consequence, we obtain a dramatic increase of the width of the plasmonic absorption peak, which accounts for the experimental optical spectra observed by Kreibig.