Eur. Phys. J. D (2013) 67: 6
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2012-30550-1

Regular Article

Dipole polarizabilities of Pd_N (N = 2−25) clusters

¹ Department of Physics, Northwest University, Xi′an 710069, P.R. China
² National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures and Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, P.R. China
³ Institute of Photonics and Photo-Technology, Northwest University, Xi′an 710069, P.R. China

^a e-mail: mali@nwu.edu.cn

Received: 3 September 2012
Received in final form: 16 November 2012
Published online: 24 January 2013

Abstract

The dipole polarizabilities of Pd_N (N = 2−25) clusters are studied using a scheme for decomposing the total polarizability of a system into site-specific contributions. Furthermore, the polarizabilities are partitioned into dipole and charge transfer components. The structure and size-specific aspects of the polarizabilities are analyzed. It is shown that the polarizabilities associated with the individual constituent atoms vary considerably with the structure of the cluster and the location of the atom or site within a given structure. For atoms at peripheral sites, the polarizabilities are substantially larger than atoms at the interior sites, and the more peripheral an atom is, the larger its polarizability. This indicates significant screening of the cluster interior by its surface. The oscillations in the total polarizability mainly come from charge transfer component oscillatory behavior and the later approaches the bulk polarizability per atom. The anisotropy of the total polarizability is closely related with the anisotropy of the cluster shape.