Abstract
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-xSrxRuO4 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 superconductorsA 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