Oscillatory photoemission cross section for simple-metal quantum wells

Abstract

A strong, oscillatory photon energy dependence is observed for the intensity of photoemission peaks due to quantum-well states in Na overlayers on Cu(111). The measurements are made at low photon energies (h\ensuremath{\nu}8 eV) with Na films, which are between four and eight atomic layers thick. The intensity oscillations are ascribed to the interference between the contributions to the outgoing wave associated with the two tails of a quantum-well state.