Structural studies of clean and overlayered surfaces with an application to xe adsorption on Ag

Low-energy electrons have a particularly important role in many of the techniques of surface science. In some experiments, such as low-energy electron diffraction and characteristic loss spectroscopy, they are scattered either elastically or inelastically; in others, such as electron-stimulated desorption, they are used to produce excitations of the surface; and in still others, the resident electrons are excited to energies where they may escape from the material, as in photoemission, Auger, and ion neutralization spectroscopy. The reason for this central role is that, of all the physical probes, the electron is the simplest one that interacts strongly enough to be sensitive to the last few layers of atoms.