AN EXPERIMENTALISTS VIEW ON THE ANALOGY BETWEEN STEP EDGES AND QUANTUM-MECHANICAL PARTICLES

Guided by scanning tunnelling microscopy images of regularly stepped s urfaces it will be illustrated that there is a striking similarity bet ween the behaviour of monoatomic step edges and quantum mechanical par ticles (spinless fermions). The direction along the step edge is equiv alent to the time, while the direction perpendicular to the step corre sponds to the one-dimensional space along which the quantum mechanical particles are located. The non-crossing condition of the steps, givin g rise to entropic repulsion, is related to the boundary condition of the wavefunction of a quantum mechanical particle at an infinitely hig h barrier. Finally, the step edge stiffness can be related to the mass of the quantum mechanical particle.