v 1 3 J un 1 99 3 Vibrations and Berry Phases of Charged

A simple model of electron-vibron interactions in buckminster-fullerene ions is solved semiclassically. Electronic degeneracies of C 60 n− induce dynamical Jahn-Teller distortions, which are unimodal for n = 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. For polyatomic molecules, the adiabatic approximation is often used to eliminate fast electrons in favor of an effective potential for the slow nuclei. This approximation requires special care when the positions of the nuclear coordinates are near points of electronic degeneracy. If the electron-ion interaction is linear in the ionic displacements (a generic case for symmetric, non colinear molecules [1]) the classical Jahn Teller theory [2] predicts that the molecule distorts and some (or all) of the electronic degeneracy is lifted. The *