  In a recent Letter, Nakamura et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 1538 (1999)]
described first principles calculations for a breaking Na nanocontact. Their
system consists of a periodic one-dimensional array of supercells, each of
which contains 39 Na atoms, originally forming a straight, crystalline wire
with a length of 6 atoms. The system is elongated by increasing the length of
the unit cell. At each step, the atomic configuration is relaxed to a new local
equilibrium, and the tensile force is evaluated from the change of the total
energy with elongation. Aside from a discontinuity of the force occuring at the
transition from a crytalline to an amorphous configuration during the early
stages of elongation, they were unable to identify any simple correlations
between the force and the number of electronic modes transmitted through the
contact. An important question is whether their model is realistic, i.e.,
whether it can be compared to experimental results obtained for a single
nanocontact between two macroscopic pieces of metal. In this Comment, we
demonstrate that with such a small unit cell, the interference effects between
neighboring contacts are of the same size as the force oscillations in a single
nanocontact.
