Image potential states on periodically corrugated metal surfaces - art. no. 045408

Image potential states (IPS's) on periodically stepped metal surfaces have been calculated within an impenetrable surface model. Band splittings and b and anticrossings are predicted for IPS's caused by the lateral back scatte rings of the stepped surfaces. A reduction in the binding energy of the low est IPS's was found due to the lateral confinement, which agrees fairly wel l with the experimental results. The calculated photoionization transition- matrix elements show that the photoionization of the lowest-energy IPS's on the stepped metal surface is nearly the same as that on planar metal surfa ces, while fur the high-energy IPS's the umklapp, process becomes important in the photoionization, giving rise to electron scattering in different di rections.