Theory of Visible Light Emission from Scanning Tunneling Microscope

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Abstract
The mechanism for visible light emission from the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) has been investigated theoretically by adapting a theory for light emitting tunnel junctions (LETJ). From the analysis of the calculated results and available experimental data, the following picture emerges. The tunneling current first excites localized surface plasmons (LSP) that are localized in a region of a few tens of Angstroms between the STM tip-front and the sample surface. Some of them decay into surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) that propagate along the sample surface. There are two channels of light emission: one is direct emission from LSP and the other is emission through SPP. The relative branching ratio between these two channels depends on the experimental configuration. The effect of sample surface roughness is very small and negligible.