Electron confinement in surface states on a stepped gold surface revealed by angle-resolved photoemission - art. no. 107601

STM images show that vicinal Au(788) surfaces are made up or a uniform arra y of (111)-oriented terraces of similar width (similar to3.8 nm). This unif ormity makes it possible to study the electronic Structure of the resulting step superlattice by angle-resolved photoemission. We show that for this t errace array the surface state appears to be broken up into one-dimensional quantum-well levels, indicating total electron confinement within the terr aces. The angular resolution allows the probability density of the terrace quantum well state to be mapped in reciprocal space, complementing nicely t he wave function measured in real space by STM.