Focus on Photoemission and Electronic
Structure
Authors: Himpsel Franz , Nilsson Per-Olof 
Published: April 2005

Around the turn of the last century the scientific community was puzzled by
experiments on the photoelectric effect reported in 1887 by Hertz. In 1905 Einstein
gave the astonishing explanation in one blow: the light is quantized. This was the
beginning of quantum theory and resulted in Einstein being awarded the Nobel Prize in
1921. It was however not until the 1960s that the photoelectric effect started to
become a tool in research laboratories for basic science.

The access to new, sensitive electronic equipment and ultrahigh vacuum, together with
more powerful computational physics, quickly saw photoelectron spectroscopy develop
into a useful scientific technique. Soon sophisticated variants of the method
appeared. In particular the use of synchrotron radiation led to the tunability of the
light wavelength and the use of polarized radiation. In addition an enormous increase
in brightness was obtained by using electron storage rings with undulators. Many new
extensions have now been added, including detection of the spin and emission angle of
the electrons.

Today photoemission is one of the major tools for detailed investigations of the
electronic structure of matter and contributes heavily to our understanding of the
properties of matter. For example it provides the complete set of quantum numbers for
electrons in a solid and has been referred to as the `smoking gun' for solving
difficult puzzles in condensed matter physics.

This celebratory Focus Issue on the application of the photoelectric effect in
science shows examples of the rich variety of applications of the phenomenon
explained by Einstein one hundred years ago.

Focus on Photoemission and Electronic Structure Contents

Photoemission spectroscopy—from early
days to recent applications
Friedrich Reinert and Stefan Hüfner

On the extraction of the self-energy from
angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy
Adam Kaminski and Helen M Fretwell

Self-energy determination and
electron–phonon coupling on Bi(110)
C Kirkegaard, T K Kim and Ph Hofmann

Metal–insulator transition in
one-dimensional In-chains on Si(111): combination of a soft shear distortion and a
double-band Peierls instability
C González, J Ortega and F Flores

One-dimensional versus two-dimensional
electronic states in vicinal surfaces
J E Ortega, M Ruiz-Osés, J Cordón, A Mugarza, J Kuntze and F
Schiller

Correlation in low-dimensional electronic
states on metal surfaces
A Menzel, Zh Zhang, M Minca, Th Loerting, C Deisl and E Bertel

Momentum-resolved dynamics of Ar/Cu(1 0
0) interface states probed by time-resolved two-photon photoemission
M Rohleder, K Duncker, W Berthold, J Güdde and U Höfer

Site-specific electronic structure of an
oligo-ethylenedioxythiophene derivative probed by resonant
photoemission
W Osikowicz, R Friedlein, M P de Jong, S L Sorensen, L Groenendaal and W R
Salaneck

High-resolution ARPES study of
quasi-particles in high-Tc superconductors
T Takahashi, T Sato, H Matsui and K Terashima

Photoemission as a probe of coexisting
and conflicting periodicities in low-dimensional solids
M Grioni, Ch R Ast, D Pacilé, M Papagno, H Berger and L Perfetti

Activated adsorption of methane on Pt(1 1
1) —an in situ XPS study
T Fuhrmann, M Kinne, B Tränkenschuh, C Papp, J F Zhu, R Denecke and H-P
Steinrück

Electronic structure of the Si(1 1
1):GaSe van der Waals-like surface termination
Reiner Rudolph, Christian Pettenkofer, Aaron A Bostwick, Jonathan A Adams,
Fumio Ohuchi, Marjorie A Olmstead, Bengt Jaeckel, Andreas Klein and Wolfram
Jaegermann

Can circular dichroism in core-level
photoemission provide a spectral fingerprint of adsorbed chiral
molecules?
F Allegretti, M Polcik, D I Sayago, F Demirors, S O'Brien, G Nisbet, C L A
Lamont and D P Woodruff

Elastic scattering in image-potential
bands observed by two-photon photoemission
K Boger, Th Fauster and M Weinelt

Spin-polarized surface state of MnSb(0 0
0 1)
O Rader, M Lezaic, S Blügel, A Fujimori, A Kimura, N Kamakura, A Kakizaki, S
Miyanishi and H Akinaga

Evolution of electronic structure in
Ca2-x
Sr
x
RuO4 observed by photoemission
Shancai Wang and Hong Ding

Ultrafast electron dynamics studied with
time-resolved two-photon photoemission: intra- and interband scattering in
C6F6/Cu(1 1 1)
P S Kirchmann, P A Loukakos, U Bovensiepen and M Wolf

Electron states and the spin density wave
phase diagram in Cr(1 1 0) films
Eli Rotenberg, B K Freelon, H Koh, A Bostwick, K Rossnagel, Andreas Schmid
and S D Kevan

Photoemission study of S adsorption on
GaAs (0 0 1)
T Strasser, L Kipp, M Skibowski and W Schattke

Combining GW calculations with
exact-exchange density-functional theory: an analysis of valence-band
photoemission for compound semiconductors
Patrick Rinke, Abdallah Qteish, Jörg Neugebauer, Christoph Freysoldt and
Matthias Scheffler

Role of site selectivity, dimensionality,
and strong correlations in angle-resolved photoemission from cuprate
superconductors
A Bansil, M Lindroos, S Sahrakorpi and R S Markiewicz

Franz Himpsel, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA Per-Olof Nilsson, Chalmers
University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden