Excitation of Plasmons and Interband Transitions by Electrons (Springer Tracts in Modern Physics)

The IFIP World Computer Congress (WCC) is one of the most important conferences in the area of computer science and a number of related Human and Social Science disciplines at the worldwide level and it has a federated structure, which takes into account the rapidly growing and expanding interests in this area. Human-Computer Interaction is now a mature and still dynamically evolving part of this area, which is represented in IFIP by the Technical Committee 13 on HCI. We are convinced that in this edition of WCC, which takes place for the first time in Italy, it will be interesting and useful to have a Symposium on Human- Computer Interaction in order to present and discuss a number of contributions in this field. There has been increasing awareness among designers of interactive systems of the importance of designing for usability, but we are still far from having products that are really usable, and usability can mean different things depending on the application domain. We are all aware that too many users of current technology feel often frustrated because computer systems are not compatible with their abilities and needs with existing work practices. As designers of tomorrow technology, we have the responsibility of creating computer artefacts that would permit better user experience with the various computing devices, so that users may enjoy more satisfying experiences with information and communications technologies. International Federation for Information Processing The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication. The scope of the series includes: foundations of computer science; software theory and practice; education; computer applications in technology; communication systems; systems modeling and optimization; information systems; computers and society; computer systems technology; security and protection in information processing systems; artificial intelligence; and human-computer interaction. Proceedings and post-proceedings of refereed international conferences in computer science and interdisciplinary fields are featured. These results often precede journal publication and represent the most current research. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing. For more information about the 300 other books in the IFIP series, please visit www.springer.com. For more information about IFIP, please visit www.ifip.org "This book treats the physics of Electron Loss Spectroscopy (ELS) with electrons of different energies. Its emphasis is on the collective excitations or plasmons in the bulk as well as on the surface, including interaction with the interband transitions. A discussion of the experimental and theoretical aspects helps to define the current state of the art. In addition to the general physics, data on the plasmons (energy, halfwidth, dispersion) obtained by different methods of observation (transmission and reflection with fast and slow electrons) have been collected as completely as possible. Mr. R. Manzke was helpful in gathering these figures. Related topics such as coupling of plasmons with light, Cerenkov radiation and waveguides, plasmons in electron gases of one and two dimensions together with some applications (microanalysis) are briefly described to round off the representation and to demonstrate the usefulness of the plasmon concept."--Preface Introduction....Pages 1-3 Volume plasmons....Pages 4-13 The dielectric function and the loss function of bound electrons....Pages 14-22 Excitation of volume plasmons....Pages 23-34 The energy loss spectrum of electrons and the loss function....Pages 35-44 Experimental results....Pages 45-64 The loss width....Pages 65-73 The wave vector dependency of the energy of the volume plasmon....Pages 74-104 Core excitations. Application to microanalysis....Pages 105-111 Energy losses by excitation of Cerenkov radiation and guided light modes....Pages 112-115 Surface excitations....Pages 116-171 Different electron energy loss spectrometers....Pages 172-180 H. Raether. Includes Index. Bibliography: P. [184]-192.