The scanning-tunneling-microscope-induced luminescence emerges recently as an incisive tool to measure the molecular properties down to the single-molecule level. The rapid experimental progress is far ahead of the theoretical effort to understand the observed phenomena. Such incompetence leads to a significant difficulty in quantitatively assigning the observed feature of the fluorescence spectrum to the structure and dynamics of a single molecule. This letter is devoted to reveal the microscopic origin of the molecular excitation via inelastic scattering of the tunneling electrons in scanning tunneling microscope. The current theory explains the observed large photon counting asymmetry between the molecular luminescence intensity at positive and negative bias voltage.

中文翻译：

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扫描隧道显微镜中非弹性电子散射激发分子的微观起源

扫描隧道显微镜诱导的发光是最近出现的，它是一种精确的工具，可以测量低至单分子水平的分子特性。快速的实验进展远远领先于理解观察到的现象的理论努力。这种无能导致将观察到的荧光光谱特征定量分配给单个分子的结构和动力学的重大困难。这封信致力于通过扫描隧道显微镜中隧道电子的非弹性散射揭示分子激发的微观起源。当前理论解释了在正偏压和负偏压下观察到的分子发光强度之间的大光子计数不对称性。