Collective electron excitations in a spherical potential well and the polarizability of the fullerene molecule

The collective motion of the electron system of the C60 molecule was investigated within the framework of the linear response theory. The model originally proposed by Mukhopadhyay and Lundqvist [1, 2, 3] and applied for C60 by Östling et al [4] was used with an electron density calculated from a spherical well potential. From the calculated dynamic polarizability a main plasmon peak at 14.4 eV in the photoabsorption cross section of the C60 molecule and a broad double peaked structure around 25 eV in the transmission electron energy loss spectrum of the solid C60 can be derived.