Some Recent Developments in DIET

Abstract

The field of DIET, the investigation of electronically stimulated desorption processes, which has been active and alive now for many years, appears to still gain in interest. There are many reasons, of which I want to emphasize three. One is, of course, the fact that our understanding of the underlying physics is continuously improving due to progress both in experimentation and in theory. The increasing application of synchrotron radiation as the means of primary excitation - which makes it possible to prepare very well-defined initial excitations, both in terms of energy and symmetry - figures strongly in the first instance. The introduction of laser methods into our field for the investigation of internal state distributions of desorbing particles, but also for the primary excitations, increases the detail of available information. But also in less obvious respects, the sophistication of experimentation is progressing, for instance in the detection of neutral or negative particles. All this poses a challenge to theory which is increasingly being met. A further very helpful circumstance is the mature state of electron spectroscopies which have also profited considerably from synchrotron techniques and which facilitate the interpretation of desorption data through the improved knowledge accumulating about the formation, evolution and decay of electronic excitations. So we can say that on its own ground DIET is healthily progressing.