Elastic Scattering Theory for Electronic Waves in Quantum Corrals

Henry K. Harbury and Wolfgang Porod

Recent scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) studies on the (111) faces of noble metals have directly imaged electronic surface-confined states, and dramatic standing-wave patterns have been observed in geometrically arranged ``quantum corral'' structures formed by Fe adatoms on Cu(111). We present a coherent elastic scattering theory for the electronic states in these ``leaky'' confining structures by seeking solutions of the two-dimensional Schr\"odinger equation compatible with Sommerfeld radiation conditions. A direct comparison to the reported experimental data reveals excellent agreement with our elastic scattering theory. We are led to the conclusion that the Fe adatoms are well modeled by finite-height potential barriers, as opposed to ``black dot'' absorbing scatterers, and that the adatoms do not significantly couple the surface-state electrons to the bulk metallic states.