Coordination-driven magic numbers in protonated argon clusters
Fuente:
arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866908744358559744 |
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| author | Chowdhury, Saajid de Oca-Estévez, María Judit Montes Foitzik, Florian Gruber, Elisabeth Scheier, Paul Villarreal, Pablo Prosmiti, Rita González-Lezana, Tomás Pérez-Ríos, Jesús |
| author_facet | Chowdhury, Saajid de Oca-Estévez, María Judit Montes Foitzik, Florian Gruber, Elisabeth Scheier, Paul Villarreal, Pablo Prosmiti, Rita González-Lezana, Tomás Pérez-Ríos, Jesús |
| contents | The structural properties of rare-gas clusters can be primarily described by a simple sphere packing model or by pairwise interactions. Remarkably, adding a single proton yields a large set of magic numbers that has remained unexplained. In this Letter, we unravel their origin by combining quantum Monte Carlo techniques with many-body ab initio potentials that correctly capture the proton's coordination environment. Thanks to this approach, we find that argon atoms are mainly localized around the classical minimum, resulting in a particularly rigid behavior in stark contrast to lighter rare-gas clusters. Moreover, as cluster size increases, we identify a clear structural transition from many-body coordination-driven stability to a regime dominated by two-body interactions, reflecting a reshaping of the underlying potential energy landscape. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_00591 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Coordination-driven magic numbers in protonated argon clusters Chowdhury, Saajid de Oca-Estévez, María Judit Montes Foitzik, Florian Gruber, Elisabeth Scheier, Paul Villarreal, Pablo Prosmiti, Rita González-Lezana, Tomás Pérez-Ríos, Jesús Atomic and Molecular Clusters Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Quantum Physics The structural properties of rare-gas clusters can be primarily described by a simple sphere packing model or by pairwise interactions. Remarkably, adding a single proton yields a large set of magic numbers that has remained unexplained. In this Letter, we unravel their origin by combining quantum Monte Carlo techniques with many-body ab initio potentials that correctly capture the proton's coordination environment. Thanks to this approach, we find that argon atoms are mainly localized around the classical minimum, resulting in a particularly rigid behavior in stark contrast to lighter rare-gas clusters. Moreover, as cluster size increases, we identify a clear structural transition from many-body coordination-driven stability to a regime dominated by two-body interactions, reflecting a reshaping of the underlying potential energy landscape. |
| title | Coordination-driven magic numbers in protonated argon clusters |
| topic | Atomic and Molecular Clusters Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Quantum Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.00591 |