Conversion pathways between a fullerene and a ring among C20 clusters by a sphere contracting walk method: Remarkable difference in local potential energy landscapes around the fullerene and the ring

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Abstract
Conversion pathways from a fullerene to a ring and vice versa among C20 clusters have been explored. A new technique has been developed for discovering multistep reaction pathways, which can be searched by finding constrained energy minima on spheres whose surfaces are contracting from the starting point to the terminal. Local landscapes that appeared on the pathways were found to be considerably different around the fullerene and the ring, from which one can make a new interpretation for no generation of the C20 fullerene in laser vaporization of graphite.