Multi-body and stability considerations of small clusters of lithium

Abstract

In this paper the results of quantum-chemical calculations of the importance of multi-body effects (i.e. the deviations from pairwise additivity) for lithium are presented. In addition, we analyse the differences between the theoretical and recent experimental determinations of the stabilization energy of Li₃. The principal conclusions of this study are (1) multi-body effects are large for this system, (2) the experimental value of the stabilization energy of Li₃ is probably incorrect.