Jian-Feng Ge, Maoz Ovadia, and Jennifer E. Hoffman
Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/S) is a powerful experimental tool to understand the electronic structure of materials at the atomic scale, with energy resolution down to the μeV range. Such resolution requires a low-vibration laboratory, low-noise electronics, and a cryogenic environment. Here we present a thorough enumeration and analysis of the various noise sources and their contributions to the noise floor of STM/S measurements. We provide a comprehensive recipe and an interactive python notebook to input and evaluate noise data, and to formulate a custom step-by-step approach for optimizing the signal-to-noise ratio in STM/S measurements.
Here we provide the interactive Python notebook, together with its html version, for the reader to plug in his/her own data in order to analyze noise data, debug noise issues, and minimize noise in scanning tunneling spectroscopy and quasi-particle interference imaging.
- This code can not be used for commercial purposes without written consent.
- The authors will be pleased if the reader cites "J. F. Ge, M. Ovadia, and J. E. Hoffman, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 90, 101401 (2019)" in publications. See the article
