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Electromagnetic coupling on an atomic scale
J Aizpurua1, G Hoffmann, S P Apell
1National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899-8423, USA.
Physical Review Letters
|October 9, 2002
Abstract:
Light emission from a scanning tunneling microscope is used to investigate the electromagnetic coupling (EMC) of a metal tip and a metal sample. Subatomic scale modifications of the tip-sample region cause spectral shifts of the fluorescence as demonstrated for a monatomic step and by variation of the tip-sample distance. For sharp tips the EMC is confined to a lateral range of a few nm. The results are consistent with model calculations of the electromagnetic response of an appropriate tip-sample geometry.