Electronic coherence length following pulsed-laser annealing of Cu(001)

High-resolution angle-resolved photoemission experiments are reported which examine the quality of a pulsed-laser-annealed Cu(001) surface. A significant degradation of the electronic coherence length is observed for laser pulse energies above a certain threshold. This is attributed to defect production following melting of the surface layers. In addition, above threshold, the defect density and the electron coherence length are found to be determined primarily by the integrated laser-energy density.