The electron-phonon coupling strength at metal surfaces directly determined from the Helium atom scattering Debye-Waller factor

Abstract

A new quantum-theoretical derivation of the elastic and inelastic scattering probability of He atoms from a metal surface, where the energy and momentum exchange with the phonon gas can only occur through the mediation of the surface free-electron density, shows that the Debye-Waller exponent is directly proportional to the electron-phonon mass coupling constant $\lambda$. The comparison between the values of $\lambda$ extracted from existing data on the Debye-Waller factor for various metal surfaces and the $\lambda$ values known from literature indicates a substantial agreement, which opens the possibility of directly extracting the electron-phonon coupling strength in quasi-2D conducting systems from the temperature or incident energy dependence of the elastic Helium atom scattering intensities.

14 pages, 2 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (3)

• Non-trivial Surface-band Dispersion on Bi(111)
• Ab initio lattice dynamics and electron-phonon coupling of Bi(111)
• Unoccupied electronic band structure of the semi-metallic Bi(111) surface probed with two-photon photoemission

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Electron-Phonon Coupling and Surface Debye Temperature of Bi${}_2$Te${}_3$(111) from Helium Atom Scattering
• Origin of the Electron-Phonon Interaction of Topological Semimetal Surfaces Measured with Helium Atom Scattering
• Nanoscale Surface Dynamics of Bi${}_2$Te${}_3$(111): Observation of a Prominent Surface Acoustic Wave and the Role of van der Waals Interactions
• Possible Excitonic Insulating Phase in Quantum-Confined Sb Nanoflakes
• Electron-Phonon Coupling Constant of Metallic Overlayers from Specular He-Atom Scattering
• The Electron-Phonon Coupling Constant for Single-Layer Graphene on Metal Substrates Determined from He Atom Scattering
• The Electron-Phonon Interaction of Low-Dimensional and Multi-Dimensional Materials from He Atom Scattering
• A fully ab initio approach to inelastic atom-surface scattering