McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics

CPM Seminar

Ab initio theory of the STM

W. Hofer

Imperial College

In this talk we give an overview of STM tunneling within the general framework of transport theory, and present the state of the art in the numerical simulations possible today. The effects occuring in everyday measurements are analyzed in five separate case studies. It is shown that we can gain a detailed understanding of all events in the tunneling experiments by employing extensive simulations. Highlights of the talk are: the presentation of ab initio calculations of forces between tip and sample in realistic tunneling conditions, the simulation of imaging of magnetism on the atomic scale with a spin-polarized STM, and the corrugation reversal due to quenching of the surface states on an iron surface.

Thursday, August 9th 2001, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Boardroom (room 104)