Plasmon excitations in two-dimensional atomic cluster systems

Abstract

Properties of plasmon excitations in two-dimensional (2D) atomic cluster systems are theoretically studied within an extended Hubbard model. The collective oscillation equations of charge, plasmon eigen-equations and the energy-absorption spectrum formula are presented. The calculated results show that different symmetries of plasmons exist in the cluster systems, and the symmetry of charge distribution in the plasmon resonance originate from the intrinsic symmetry of the corresponding eigen-plasmon modes, but not from the symmetry of applied external fields; however, the plasmon excitation with a certain polarization direction should be excited by the field in this direction, the dipole mode of plasmons can be excited by both uniform and non-uniform fields, but multipole ones cannot be excited by an uniform field. In addition, we show that for a given electron density, plasmon spectra are red-shifted with increasing size of the systems.