%0 Journal Article
%T Temperature Dependence of the Optical Response of Small Sodium Clusters
%A Aurel Bulgac
%A Caio Lewenkopf
%J Physics
%D 1995
%I arXiv
%R 10.1209/0295-5075/31/9/003
%X We present an analysis of the temperature dependence of the optical response of small sodium clusters in a temperature range bracketing the melting phase transition. When the temperature increases, the mean excitation energy undergoes a red shift and the plasmon is significantly broadened, in agreement with recent experimental data. We show that the single--particle levels acquire a prominent width and the HOMO--LUMO gap as well as the width of the occupied band are reduced due to large thermal cluster size and shape fluctuations. This results in a sharp increase of the static polarizability with temperature.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/chem-ph/9504001v1