ABSTRACT
The electronic properties of surfaces can dramatically differ from its bulk properties. This offers the opportunity to tailor the electronic surface properties e.g. by the adsorption of additional atoms or molecules. Therefore a detailed understanding of the electronic surface structure as well as of the adsorbate/surface interaction is essential.
In my talk I will discuss that this can be achieved by means of scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. We studied the scattering of surface state electrons in the spin orbit split surface states of bismuth (111). By dI/dV imaging we analyzed the lateral variation of the local density of states near surface defects e.g. step edges or adsorbates. This allows to extract the involved scattering vectors [1]. As a function of energy a variety of scattering vectors incorporating both, forward and backward scattering is found. The findings are corroborated by band structure calculations taking into account the spin texture of the surface state bands.
[1] M.C. Cottin, C.A. Bobisch, J. Schaffert, G. Jnawali, A. Sonntag, G. Bihlmayer,
R. Möller, Appl. Phys. Lett. 98, 022108 (2011)