4 M ay 2 00 5 The spectra of mixed 3 He - 4 He droplets

The diffusion Monte Carlo technique is used to calculate and analyze the excitation spectrum of He atoms bound to a cluster of He atoms, by using a previously determined optimum filling of single-fermion orbits with well defined orbital angular momentum L, spin S and parity quantum numbers. The study concentrates on the energies and shapes of the three kinds of states for which the fermionic part of the wave function is a single Slater determinant: maximum L or maximum S states within a given orbit, and fully polarized clusters. The picture that emerges is that of systems with strong shell effects whose binding and excitation energies are essentially determined by averages over configuration at fixed number of particles and spin, i.e., by the monopole properties of an effective Hamiltonian.