Comparison of Resonance Dynamics in Metal Clusters and Nuclei

The scope of this contribution is the comparison of metals clusters and nuclei. These systems have much in common as their structure and dynamics are dominated by the behavior of fermion liquids, the protons and neutrons in nuclei and the dense electron cloud in clusters. This gives rise to shell effects and a corresponding deformation pattern as well as pronounced resonance excitations related to zero sound in homogeneous matter, the giant resonances in nuclei and the surface plasmon in clusters. The structural aspects have already been much discussed in the past and are well documented in several review articles, see e.g. [1, 2]. A prominent feature here was the appearance of supershells which are only accessible in metal clusters with their unlimited pool of system sizes [3] and which have a particularly transparent explanation in the framework of semiclassical 

Metal Clusters. Edited by W. Ekardt 1999 John Wiley Sons Ltd 

The more recent developments in cluster dynamics proceed into the regime of large amplitudes and nonlinear dynamics as accessed e.g. by femtoseconds laser pulses or energetic collisions. This regime was intensively studied long ago in nuclear physics in connection with heavy-ion reactions [12-14]. This opens up a rich field of various phenomena and comparison between nuclei and clusters is particularly interesting there. We will discuss the dynamics in the nonlinear regime in Section 7.4. 

The theoretical framework for all regimes is the (time-dependent) local-density approximation (TDLDA) which is much discussed also in Chapter 1 of this book. We thus will present here only a short discussion of the essential ingredients and compare it with the analog mean-field models in nuclear physics. This is done as a starter in the next section. 

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