Coupling of surface and volume dipole oscillations in C-60 molecules

We first give a short review of the local-current approximation (LCA), derived from a general variation principle, which serves as a semiclassical description of strongly collective excitations in finite fermion systems starting from their quantum-mechanical mean-field ground state. We illustrate it for the example of coupled translational and compressional dipole excitations in metal clusters. We then discuss collective electronic dipole excitations in C-60 molecules (Buckminster fullerenes). We show that the coupling of the pure translational mode (surface plasmon) with compressional volume modes in the semiclasscial LCA yields semi-quantitative agreement with microscopic time-dependent density functional (TDLDA) calculations, while both theories yield qualitative agreement with the recent experimental observation of a volume plasmon.