Molecular Quantum Simulators Reproduce Electronic Features of Non-Kekulé Molecules

STM is a powerful technique for studying surfaces and engineering quantum simulators atom by atom. In this work we utilize STM to build quantum simulators, or quantum corrals, from CO molecules adsorbed onto a Cu(111) surface to model molecules. Specifically, we perform a proof of concept experiment to demonstrate that this method can be used to model non-Kekulémolecules. In addition to STM we also use computer simulations to help design our simulators. We find that our simulators accurately reproduce the orbitals of phenalenyl, the simplest of the non-Kekulémolecules, and that we can extract quantitative information from our corrals that agrees with literature results on the actual molecule.