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Work Function Dependence Of Charge Transfer In Desorption And Sputtering Of Atoms From Surfaces, Sarah J. Steuber, Peter Nordlander, Hongxiao Shao, David C. Langreth

Scanning Microscopy

Using a recently developed many-electron theory, we investigate the work function dependence of charge transfer during desorption and sputtering of atoms from metal surfaces. We investigate the effects of substrate bandwidth, atomic velocity and level degeneracy on the charge transfer. We show that many-electron interactions introduce relatively small but measurable effects on the work function dependence of the charge transfer. We find that these effects can be stronger for negative ion states than for positive ion states. The reason is that for negative ions, a strongly correlated Kondo state may be formed near the surface.