Extracting Quasiparticle Lifetimes from STM experiments

Abstract

Based on Quasiparticle interference(QPI) around a point impurity, we demonstrate an analysis scheme that extracts the lifetime of a quasiparticle by using the local density of states(LDOS) data around the impurity in a Scanning Tunneling Microscopy(STM) experiment. This data analysis scheme would augment the Fourier-Transform Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopic methods which provides us with the quasiparticle dispersion. Thus, point impurities can be used as probes to extract quasiparticle lifetimes from STM experiments and this would complement other experimental methods such as Angle Resolved Photo-emission Spectrocopy(ARPES). We detail how the scheme would apply to metals and superconductors.