Measurement of electron wave functions and confining potentials via photoemission

TL;DR

This paper presents an experimental method to directly measure electron wave functions and confining potentials on stepped Au(111) surfaces using photoemission and Fourier analysis, providing detailed insights into surface state confinement.

Contribution

It introduces an iterative Fourier-based approach to reconstruct real-space wave functions and potentials from photoemission data, advancing surface state characterization techniques.

Findings

Successfully reconstructed electron wave functions from photoemission data.

Determined the effective confining potentials for surface states.

Validated the method with experimental measurements on Au(111) surfaces.

Abstract

Wave functions and electron potentials of laterally-confined surface states are determined experimentally by means of photoemission from stepped Au(111) surfaces. Using an iterative formalism borrowed from x-ray diffraction, we retrieve the real-space wave functions from the Fourier transform of their momentum representations, whose absolute values in turn are directly measured by angle-resolved photoemission. The effective confining potential is then obtained by introducing the wave functions into Schroedinger's equation.