We present a combined, experimental, and computational investigation of the growth mode and the valence-band structure of Ag/Pd(111), with the focus on the Ag 4d derived quantum well states. Low-energy electron diffraction and scanning-tunneling microscopy are used to determine epitaxial, layer-by-layer growth of silver on the palladium substrate. High-resolution (in both energy and angle) photoelectron spectra and ab initio density-functional band-structure calculations are compared for 1 and 2 ML silver films along the Gamma-M-' high symmetry line of the surface Brillouin zone. The observed d-derived electronic states and their dispersion are explained in terms of quantum well states. The interaction of the silver 4d electronic states with the palladium substrate is discussed.

We present a new, efficient and robust method for solving electrostatic problems. The basic idea of the method is rather simple, but has not been exploited so far. The essence of the method is achieving of the equipotentiality of the conducting surfaces by iterative nonlocal charge transfer. Besides the simple physical idea, the computational behavior of the method is very appealing. It scales linearly in memory with the number of elements and it converges geometrically without the occurrence of Critical Slowing Down. The presented method can be extended in application to other types of problems, electrostatics being a very specific example in which one can remain only on the boundaries of the objects involved in the calculation. Due to high efficiency and low resource demands, this method could prove useful in many areas that require electrostatic calculations of high precision and detail—medical applications, charged particle detector/accelerator construction, printed electronics being just some of them.