Quasi-bound resonances in electron scattering by small metal clusters

Abstract

A quantal calculation to evaluate theoretically the elastic cross section of electrons scattered by metal clusters is presented. The method is applied to the elastic dispersion of low energy electrons (up to 5 eV) from the spherical sodium clusters Na8 and Na20. Strong resonances in the total cross sections are found for some energies which are closely related to the existence of quasi-bound states, i.e. states completely bound in the classical limit.