Coordination-driven magic numbers in protonated argon clusters

The structural properties of rare-gas clusters can be primarily described by a simple sphere packing model or by pairwise interactions. Remarkably, adding a single proton yields a large set of magic numbers that has remained unexplained. In this Letter, we unravel their origin by combining quantum Monte Carlo techniques with many-body ab initio potentials that correctly capture the proton's coordination environment. Thanks to this approach, we find that argon atoms are mainly localized around the classical minimum, resulting in a particularly rigid behavior in stark contrast to lighter rare-gas clusters. Moreover, as cluster size increases, we identify a clear structural transition from many-body coordination-driven stability to a regime dominated by two-body interactions, reflecting a reshaping of the underlying potential energy landscape.

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