Experiments on the exchange-correlation hole in solids
Juergen Kirschner
Max-Planck-Institut für Mikrostrukturphysik
Germany
12:00pm, Chem 260
FRIDAY, May 16, 2008
The concept of the exchange-correlation hole (xc-hole) is fundamental to solid state physics. It was introduced in the early 1930ies by Wigner and Seitz and Slater, and postulates, that each electron in a solid is surrounded by a region of reduced electronic charge, adding up to exactly one electronic charge. Thus, each such “dressed” electron looks “neutral” to another one residing beyond a certain distance. This concept explained why electrons essentially behave like independent quasi-particles. Despite the success of this postulate it has never been directly tested experimentally for the past 70 years. In order to do this, one has to make a scattering experiment, which by the very nature of the dressed electrons must have a rather small cross section.
We set up an (e,2e) experiment in which an electron (of some 10 eV kinetic energy) is sent to a sample, is elastically back reflected and on its way out may scatter with a valence electron. There are cases where the incident and the hit electron may have sufficient energy to overcome the surface barrier and may be detected in vacuum. (needless to say that they are indistinguishable). For a given emission direction of the one electron the electron-electron interaction manifests itself in the angular distribution of the second electron around this direction. We made such experiments and found that there is a depletion zone for the second electron within an angular range of about 1 rad, essentially independent of its energy. We tested this for alkali halides as well as for Cu with somewhat different results. Since the cause of this effect is the same as the reason for the xc-hole, namely the mutual repulsion of electrons by exchange interaction and Coulomb repulsion, one may eventually map experimentally the xc-hole.
* in collaboration with F. Schumann, J. Berakdar, and C. Winkler
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