Statistical Properties of Conduction Electrons in an Isolated Metal Nanosphere

摘要

We explore differences between canonical and grand canonical ensembles of 500-2000 free electrons confined in a spherical well with a radius from 1.2 to 2 nm. The averaged occupation numbers of the electronic energy levels and their variances are calculated. For isolated Ag and Au particles, the sum of the variances of all occupation numbers differs from the corresponding bulk-metal value by a factor of 0.005 to 2.