- #1
mt42
- 9
- 3
Recently, I was giving a presentation for my research group related to ARPES to improve my understanding. I mentioned that the probing depth of ARPES is a few angstroms, meaning we can only look at surface states, and I was sort of giving a real space picture. In other words, ARPES can only probe electrons that are near the physical surface of the material because "deeper" electrons are scattered.
After someone asked a question about measuring surface states and bulk states, my PI stopped us and said that this is not quite accurate; ARPES is actually probing the surface of the Brillouin zone (e.g. surface relates to momentum space, not real space). My PI actually became a bit confused himself because he said that the BZ surface is related to the real surface, or at least they should be, but it really didn't make sense to me and he couldn't paint a coherent picture for me. I also just finished year one of grad school and haven't taken any formal solid state course, so I am self-learning about the BZ and I couldn't ask him any proper follow-up questions.
How do I relate these momentum surface states to physical surfaces, if there is such a relation? Perhaps someone can point me to references if this is not such a straightforward question. This is a pretty fundamental question for my research, which will be related to ARPES and topological materials, so I greatly appreciate your help!
After someone asked a question about measuring surface states and bulk states, my PI stopped us and said that this is not quite accurate; ARPES is actually probing the surface of the Brillouin zone (e.g. surface relates to momentum space, not real space). My PI actually became a bit confused himself because he said that the BZ surface is related to the real surface, or at least they should be, but it really didn't make sense to me and he couldn't paint a coherent picture for me. I also just finished year one of grad school and haven't taken any formal solid state course, so I am self-learning about the BZ and I couldn't ask him any proper follow-up questions.
How do I relate these momentum surface states to physical surfaces, if there is such a relation? Perhaps someone can point me to references if this is not such a straightforward question. This is a pretty fundamental question for my research, which will be related to ARPES and topological materials, so I greatly appreciate your help!