Study of Irreversible Processes in Condensed Matter by Nonlinear Time and Space Resolved Techniques

One day in 1925 Pieter Debye was sitting in his office at the E.T.H. in Zürich when a visitor from Norway was announced. In came a tall young man, who walked silently across the room, bent over the desk and said solemnly: ‘Professor Debye, your theory of electrolytes is incorrect.’ Whereupon Debye, after begging the stranger to sit down, and inviting him to discuss his objections, offered him an assistantship for the following year. The young man’s name was Lars Onsager (Murphy & Cohen 1968). Forty-three years later Onsager was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for ‘the discovery of the reciprocal relations bearing his name, which are fundamental for the thermodynamics of irreversible processes’. A group of physicists and chemists at Cornell had written of him: ‘We believe that his work is unique for its penetration, breadth and influence in the development of theoretical and experimental studies of condensed matter. He is surely one of the outstanding physicists of this century.’

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Inelastic scattering at surfaces and interfaces

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100143560 ◽

1986 ◽

Vol 44 ◽

pp. 392-393

Author(s):

R. H. Ritchie ◽

A. Howie

Keyword(s):

Inelastic Scattering ◽

Surface Properties ◽

Correlation Energy ◽

Condensed Matter ◽

Charged Particles ◽

Condensed Matter Physics ◽

Optical Phonons ◽

Exchange Correlation ◽

Surfaces And Interfaces ◽

Inelastic Interactions

An important part of condensed matter physics in recent years has involved detailed study of inelastic interactions between swift electrons and condensed matter surfaces. Here we will review some aspects of such interactions.Surface excitations have long been recognized as dominant in determining the exchange-correlation energy of charged particles outside the surface. Properties of surface and bulk polaritons, plasmons and optical phonons in plane-bounded and spherical systems will be discussed from the viewpoint of semiclassical and quantal dielectric theory. Plasmons at interfaces between dissimilar dielectrics and in superlattice configurations will also be considered.

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