Vibration of the Dimer on Si(001) Surface Excited by STM Current

TL;DR

This study models the vibrational excitation of Si(001) surface dimers by STM current, introducing an effective temperature concept to explain nonlinear behaviors and image symmetry changes observed in STM experiments.

Contribution

It presents a Hamiltonian-based model incorporating electron-vibration coupling and introduces an effective temperature to analyze vibrational state transitions induced by STM current.

Findings

Effective temperature depends nonlinearly on substrate temperature and STM current.

At low substrate temperatures, the effective temperature can reach several hundred Kelvin.

The model explains the symmetric-asymmetric crossover in STM images of Si(001) dimers.

Abstract

The vibration of the dimer excited by STM current on Si(001) surface is investigated. We describe this system by the Hamiltonian which has the electron-vibration coupling term as the key ingredient. In order to characterize the transition rates induced by STM current between vibrational states we have introduced the effective temperature of the vibration which differs from the temperature of the substrate. The behavior of the effective temperature depends on the substrate temperature and STM current in highly nonlinear manner and qualitatively changes around 50K of the substrate temperature. At lower temperatures, the effective temperature strongly deviates from the substrate temperature and reaches a few hundred Kelvin for the typical values of STM current. At higher substrate temperatures, the effective temperature reduces to the substrate temperature. On the basis of these behaviors of the effective temperature, we solve the puzzle of the symmetric-asymmetric crossover in dimer images of STM observation in the ordered state of c(4 x 2).