Stability limits of mixed spin-polarised tritium clusters

Abstract

We present variational and diffusion Monte Carlo studies of pure and mixed spin-polarised tritium clusters. Our results for pure clusters, consisting of only tritium atoms T↓, are in good agreement with previous calculations. We show that mixed clusters, consisting of up to 60 T↓ atoms and one spin-polarized deuterium D↓ atom are stable. On the other hand, we verified that tritium clusters of up to N = 60 atoms do not bind even one H↓ atom; the ground-state energy of the considered mixed T↓-H↓ clusters is within the errorbars equal to or higher than the energy of the pure tritium cluster. In addition to the energy, we present results of the structure of the clusters, which has been determined using unbiased estimators. For larger N, a D↓ atom forms an Andreev state on the surface of a tritium cluster core. The H↓ atoms stay further away from the center of the cluster than the D↓ atoms and slowly increase their separation as the simulation proceeds, indicating instability.