Surprises in the physics of metal surfaces

Abstract

Metal surfaces sometimes exhibit surprisingly complex properties, such as complicated surface structures, vibrational anisotropies, and a strongly enhanced surface anharmonicity, which result in drastic changes in properties as a function of temperature. Some examples are discussed in detail: the strong temperature dependence of interlayer spacings for Ag(111), the complicated herringbone reconstruction of Au(111), and reversed vibrational anisotropies and thermal contraction on unreconstructed FCC(110) surfaces. It is shown that ab initio density functional theory calculations can shed useful insight on these puzzling phenomena.