Electric and magnetic properties of the aromatic sixty-carbon cage

We report the use of large supercomputer resources to perform the first ab initio calculations on the polarisability and magnetisability of C60 and its smaller analogue C202+. It is found that both molecules have the high polarisability characteristic of π systems and the diamagnetic magnetisability typical of aromatic molecules. Insofar as it is possible to extrapolate to the basis-set limit, the calculations predict net diamagnetism for the clusters, and a diamagnetic effect on the NMR chemical shift of an encapsulated atom.