Modeling the formation of alkali clusters attached to helium nanodroplets and the abundance of high-spin states

The doping process of helium nanodroplets with alkali atoms has been modeled in order to study deviations from the Poissonian statistics of measured pick-up statistics which are important for assigning cluster or complex sizes in many experimental studies. Several, formally unexplained findings are reproduced and their origin has been analyzed: derivations from the expected functional form of the initial incline, the suppression of the formation of lithium clusters, the influence of the functional form and width of droplet size distributions. Furthermore, the controversially discussed formation of high-spin alkali clusters on helium droplets has been calculated within the model. The selection of high-spin states comes out to depend strongly on the experimental conditions, and is in general not pronounced for cluster sizes ≥3. The enhancement factor of 50 of high-spin states reported in earlier experiments is reproduced when choosing the conditions of these experiments.