Static dipole polarizability and binding energy of sodium clusters Nan (n=1-10): A critical assessment of all-electron based post Hartree-Fock and density functional methods.

A systematic all electron post Hartree-Fock as well as density functional theory (DFT) based calculations for the polarizability and binding energy of sodium metal clusters have been performed and an in-depth analysis of the discrepancy between the experimental and theoretical results is presented. A systematic investigation for the assessment of different DFT exchange-correlation functionals in predicting the polarizability values has also been reported. All the pure DFT functionals have been found to considerably underestimate the calculated polarizability values as compared to the MP2 results. DFT calculations using the full Hartree-Fock exchange along with one-parameter progressive correlation functional have, however, been shown to yield results in good agreement with the MP2 and experimental results. The possible sources of error present in the experimental measurements as well as in the different theoretical methods have also been analyzed. One of the most important conclusions of the present study is that the effect of electron correlation plays a significant role in determining the polarizability of the clusters and the MP2 method can be considered to be one of the most reliable methods for their prediction. It has also been noted that the polarizability value of the lower member clusters (Na2 and Na4) calculated by highly sophisticated methods such as, CCSD and CCSD(T) are found to be very close to the corresponding MP2 values. The polarizability and the binding energy of the clusters are found to be inversely related to each other and their correlation is rationalized by invoking the minimum polarizability principle. A good linear correlation between the polarizability and volume of the cluster has also been found to exist. (c) 2004 American Institute of Physics