Vanishing gap in LiF for electronic excitations by slow antiprotons

Abstract

We study the influence of antiprotons and protons traveling through LiF on the band structure of the insulator using the embedded-cluster method. The crystal is represented by ${\text{F}}_{m}^{\ensuremath{-}}{\text{Li}}_{n}^{+}$ clusters with up to 19 fluorine ions embedded in a lattice of point charges representing the remainder of the crystal. The minimum excitation energy of LiF perturbed by the (anti)proton impurity is calculated employing the multiconfiguration self-consistent field method. The repulsive potential of the antiproton causes a dramatic local perturbation of the LiF band structure. We find a strong suppression of the excitation energy by more than an order of magnitude compared to that of the unperturbed crystal. The present results provide a simple explanation of recent stopping-power experiments for antiprotons in LiF which, surprisingly, found a ``metal-like'' behavior of the wide-band-gap insulator LiF. Our results also agree with recent experimental data indicating a deviation from metallic behavior of the stopping power of proton projectiles.