  Plasmons in ultranarrow metal gaps are highly sensitive to the electron
density profile at the metal surfaces. Using a fully quantum mechanical
approach, we study the effects of electron spill-out on gap plasmons and
reflectance from ultrasharp metal grooves. We demonstrate that the mode index
of ultranarrow gap plasmons converges to the bulk refractive index in the limit
of vanishing gap and, thereby, rectify the unphysical divergence found in
classical models. Surprisingly, spill-out also significantly increases the
plasmonic absorption for few-nanometer gaps and lowers the reflectance from
arrays of ultrasharp metal grooves. These findings are explained in terms of
enhanced gap plasmon absorption taking place inside the gap 1-2 {\AA} from the
walls and delocalization near the groove bottom. Reflectance calculations
taking spill-out into account are shown to be in much better agreement with
measurements compared with classical models.
