Quasiclassical description of electronic supershells in simple metal clusters

A quasiclassical method for calculating shell effects, which has been used previously in atomic and plasma physics, is used to describe electronic supershells in metal clusters. An analytical expression is obtained, in the spherical jellium model, for the oscillating part of the binding energy of electrons of a cluster as a sum of contributions from supershells with quantum numbers 2n(r)+l, 3n(r)+l, 4n(r)+l,... This expression is written in terms of the classical characteristics of the motion of an electron with the Fermi energy in a self-consistent potential. The conditions under which a new supershell appears and the relative contribution of this shell are investigated as a function of the cluster size and form of the potential. Specific calculations are performed for a "square well" of finite depth. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-3640(99)00417-X].