Assisted scanning tunneling microscopy with visible polarized laser light

Summary form only given. Laser-assisted scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) has been used in recent years to obtain new information about surfaces properties in atomic scale. Frequency mixing at the STM junction with infrared radiation, photoassisted spectroscopy in semiconductors materials, and images with atomic resolution of graphite recording rectification signal have been reported. We have performed an experiment using a tungsten tip and highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) as the sample. The tip-sample interface was illuminated with an He-Ne laser polarized in the s and p directions.