Shell effects on symmetric fragmentations of alkali-metal clusters

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Abstract
The process of symmetric fragmentation of multiply charged alkali-metal clusters consisting of several tens of atoms is studied using the theory of shell corrections, which has been originally applied to the nuclear fission problem. The potential-energy surface of the fragmentation process is calculated for various sizes of clusters. The variation of the shell correction term due to shape deformation is found to be much larger than that of the energy of the liquid droplet if the mother cluster is metastable. Symmetric fragmentation is most likely to occur when the size of products is nearly equal to the magic number. The reaction paths of fragmentation into both magic and nonmagic clusters are also discussed.