Surface sensitivity of very low energy electrons

The surface sensitivity of electron diffraction and of electron spectroscopies is determined by the imaginary component of the electron self-energy. In crystals, the energy and direction dependence of the electron attenuation and of the escape depth should be taken into account at very low energies. Strong anisotropy of the electron attenuation has been obtained around 20 eV from peak shapes in VLEED intensity profiles from (111) transition metal surfaces. Extension of the local density approximation in the density functional formalism provides quantitative description of the electron self-energy. The one-step model of angular resolved photoemission incorporating the self-energy predicts a strong energy and angle dependence of the escape depth of low energy photoelectrons emitted from GaAs(110).