Auger effect

The Auger effect is a nonradiative atomic relaxation in which an electron fills an inner-shell vacancy and transfers its energy to another electron, ejecting it from the atom.

Core hole: A vacancy in an atom’s tightly bound inner electron shells. The effect begins when an inner-shell vacancy creates an unstable atomic state.
Auger electron spectroscopy: A surface-analysis technique that identifies elements by measuring energies of emitted Auger electrons. It uses the effect’s characteristic electron energies to determine surface composition.
Atomic orbital: A quantum-mechanical description of an electron’s state and spatial distribution in an atom. Orbital energies and occupancies define the states participating in Auger transitions.
Radiative transition: A transition between quantum states that emits or absorbs a photon. The Auger effect releases transition energy through electron ejection instead of photon emission.
Auger electron: An electron ejected from an atom when it receives energy from a nonradiative relaxation. It carries away the energy released as another electron fills the core hole.
Scanning Auger microscopy: A microscopy technique that maps surface elemental composition using a focused electron beam and Auger-electron detection. It turns Auger signals into spatially resolved maps of surface chemistry.
Electron shell: A group of atomic electron states with related principal quantum numbers and characteristic energies. The effect is named by the shells from which its electrons move.
Coster–Kronig transition: An Auger transition in which the vacancy is filled by an electron from the same principal shell. It is a closely related, more restricted class of nonradiative atomic relaxation.
Fluorescence yield: The probability that atomic relaxation after inner-shell ionization emits an X-ray photon. It measures how often photon emission competes with Auger relaxation.
Electron-beam-induced current: A technique that measures currents generated when an electron beam excites charge carriers in a semiconductor. Auger recombination can limit the carrier collection measured in high-injection conditions.

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