Inelastic transport of tunnel and field-emitted electrons through a single atom

Abstract
The desorption of individual hydrogen atoms from a Ge(111) surface with the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope is used as a prototype system for investigating the inelastic transport of electrons through a single atom. A method based on the analysis of the desorption time averaged over the spatial extent of the hydrogen site has enabled the localization and the efficiency of the inelastic electron interaction to be studied. Both the localization and the efficiency show very different features in the tunnel and field emission regimes.