Abstract

Optical Fizeau fringes appear when a monochromatic light illuminates the surface of a thin optically transparent wedge. As the wavelength of the Fermi electrons in a metal is by a factor of 1000 smaller then the wavelength of light, one could expect to observe the similar phenomenon of electron interference fringes on a nanometer thickness metal wedge. The perfect tool to detect the electron interference pattern is a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), as it can probe the local density of states (LDOS), and test the interference conditions for the Fermi electrons. Indeed, the STM has been used successfully to reveal different surface interference phenomena (1-4).

© 1997 Optical Society of America