Dynamics of low-dimensional systems

Abstract

With the development of techniques for high-resolution inelastic helium atom scattering (HAS), electron scattering (EELS) and neutron spin echo spectroscopy, it has become possible, within approximately the last thirty years, to measure the dispersion curves of surface phonons in insulators, semiconductors and metals. In recent years, the advent of new experimental techniques such as 3He spin-echo spectroscopy, scanning inelastic electron tunnel spectroscopy, inelastic x-ray scattering spectroscopy and inelastic photoemission have extended surface phonon spectroscopy to a variety of systems. These include ultra-thin metal films, adsorbates at surface and elementary processes where surface phonons play an important role. Other important directions have been actively pursued in the past decade: the dynamics of stepped surfaces and clusters grown on metal surfaces, due to their relevance in many dynamical and chemical processes at surfaces, including heterogeneous catalysis; clusters; diffusion etc. The role of surface effects in these processes has been conjectured since the early days of surface dynamics, although only now is the availability of ab initio approaches providing those conjectures with a microscopic basis. Last but not least, the investigation of non-adiabatic effects, originating for instance from the hybridization (avoided crossing) of the surface phonons branches with the quasi 1D electron-hole excitation branch, is also a challenging new direction. Furthermore, other elementary oscillations such as surface plasmons are being actively investigated. The aforementioned experimental breakthroughs have been accompanied by advances in the theoretical study of atom–surface interaction. In particular, in the past decade first principles calculations based on density functional perturbation theory have boosted the theoretical study of the dynamics of low-dimensional systems. Phonon dispersion relations of clean surfaces, the dynamics of adsorbates, and the vibrational spectra of clusters and carbon-based nanostructures, just to name a few of the low-dimensional systems addressed in this special issue, can be both accurately computed from first principles and measured experimentally. Even less computationally demanding semi-empirical simulations based on tight-binding or continuum models play a crucial role in assessing, for instance, the interplay between morphology, defects and the elastic properties of low-dimensional systems. The impressive amount of work and progress achieved in the past decade within the general theory and spectroscopy of the dynamics of low-dimensional systems is marked by several relevant trends that are exemplified by the contributions gathered together in this special issue. They span a wide spectrum of experimental and theoretical methods applied to the study of the dynamical properties of low-dimensional systems and new emerging phenomena at the nanoscale, such as the peculiar optical properties of ring shaped quantum dots, plasmon dynamics in metallic nanoclusters and the relaxation dynamics of nanomagnets. This issue is dedicated to our esteemed colleague Giorgio Benedek on the occasion of his 70th birthday. It collects together a number of papers written by authors from all over the world with a recognized reputation in the above mentioned fields where Giorgio Benedek has made important and fundamental contributions.