Vibrations and Berry Phases of Charged Buckminsterfullerene

A simple model of electron-vibron interactions in buckminsterfullerene ions is solved semiclassically. Electronic degeneracies of C$_{60}$$^{n-}$ induce dynamical Jahn-Teller distortions, which are unimodal for $n\!\ne\!3$ and bimodal for $n\!=\!3$. The quantization of motion along the Jahn-Teller manifold leads to a symmetric-top rotator Hamiltonian. I find Molecular Aharonov-Bohm effects where electronic Berry phases determine the vibrational spectra, zero point fluctuations, and electrons' pair binding energies. The latter are relevant to superconductivity in alkali-fullerenes.Comment: Latex 11 pages. IIT-00

The degenerate 3-band Hubbard model with "anti-Hund's rule" interactions; a model for AxC60

We consider the orbitally degenerate 3-band Hubbard model with on-site interactions which favor low spin and low orbital angular momentum using standard second order perturbation theory in the large Hubbard-U limit. At even integer filling this model is a Mott insulator with a non-degenerate ground state that allows for a simple description of particle-hole excitations as well as gapped spin and orbital modes. We find that the Mott gap is generally indirect and that the single particle spectrum at low doping reappears close to even filling but rescaled by a factor 2/3 or 1/3. The model captures the basic phenomenology of the Mott insulating and metallic fullerides AxC60. This includes the existence of a smaller spin gap and larger charge gap at even integer filling, the fact that odd integer stoichiometries are generally metallic while even are insulating, as well as the rapid suppression of the density of states and superconducting transition temperatures with doping away from x=3.Comment: Revised with additional reference