A STUDY OF TIME AND SPACE CORRELATIONS IN FIELD-EMISSION CURRENT FLUCTUATIONS WITH A FIBEROPTIC TECHNIQUE

A new technique of measurements of field emission current fluctuations is proposed. The technique uses fiber optics and offers such advantages as the possibility to easily vary the geometry of the probed regions and the distance between them on the field emitter. The correlation functions of field emission current fluctuations have been measured with this technique for O/W(110), H/W(110), Si(111) and Na/Si(111) systems. Some data on surface diffusion coefficients are derived from the measurements.