Rate equations for dynamic processes at solid surfaces: Competition between charge transfer and thermalization of the adatom–metal-surface bond

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
An extended master equation describing the time evolution of a quantum dynamic system embedded in a thermal bath is derived for the case in which electronic transitions between the reactant and the product channel within the system compete with phonon-induced transitions within the reactant channel. In the limit of vanishing coupling to the thermal bath the proposed equation reduces to the Liouville equation with off-diagonal elements of the density matrix neglected. We show the connection between the extended master equation and the phenomenological rate equation recently derived and used to study field-induced desorption. The memory kernel of the non-Markovian term in the extended master equation is related to the quantum-mechanical time-evolution operator.

This publication has 19 references indexed in Scilit: