Dielectric response metals, conductors

Although quite obvious, it is important to remark that a perfect conductor-like model completely neglects the chemical nature of the metal (i.e., all the metals behave in the same way). This is different to what happens for solvents, where even the simplest models include at least one solvent-specific parameter, the static dielectric constant. However, the chemical nature of the metal is relevant for another aspect of the static dielectric response that is neglected by the conductor model the nonlocal effects. They will be discussed in the following Section, The Response Properties of a Molecule Close to a Metal Specimen Surface Enhanced Phenomena and Related Continuum Models. 

Warning These aesthetically pleasing limiting forms should not be used to compute the interaction of real metals. Except at low frequencies, the dielectric response of a real metal is not that of an ideal conductor. Only when T - 0 does the summation over eigenfrequencies become the integration that is needed to derive these seductive popular forms. 

The molecule is often represented as a polarizable point dipole. A few attempts have been performed with finite size models, such as dielectric spheres [64], To the best of our knowledge, the first model that joined a quantum mechanical description of the molecule with a continuum description of the metal was that by Hilton and Oxtoby [72], They considered an hydrogen atom in front of a perfect conductor plate, and they calculated the static polarizability aeff to demonstrate that the effect of the image potential on aeff could not justify SERS enhancement. In recent years, PCM has been extended to systems composed of a molecule, a metal specimen and possibly a solvent or a matrix embedding the metal-molecule system in a molecularly shaped cavity [62,73-78], In particular, the molecule was treated at the Hartree-Fock, DFT or ZINDO level, while for the metal different models have been explored for SERS and luminescence calculations, metal aggregates composed of several spherical particles, characterized by the experimental frequency-dependent dielectric constant. For luminescence, the effects of the surface roughness and the nonlocal response of the metal (at the Lindhard level) for planar metal surfaces have been also explored. The calculation of static and dynamic electrostatic interactions between the molecule, the complex shaped metal body and the solvent or matrix was done by using a BEM coupled, in some versions of the model, with an IEF approach. 

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