Surface electronic fluctuations in metals
Falkovsky L. A., Klama S.
The effect of the surface on electronic fluctuations in anisotropic metals is studied theoretically. The Coulomb interaction of the electron-hole excitations is taken into account self-consistently. A system of Boltzmann's equations for electronic fluctuations and of Maxwell's equations for the interaction field is solved with the required boundary conditions. The observed inelastically scattered light outside the metal is the result of the collective electron interaction with the radiation inside the metal. The scattering cross section consists of the bulk contribution of electron-hole pairs and plasmons, which differs from the scattering by infinite metal only in the effect of the penetration of radiation in to the skin layer. The surface contribution to the cross section is attributed to the electromagnetic excitations of the nonradiative surface plasmons to the vacuum surface plasmons (the sharp peak) and the radiative surface plasmons (the continuum).