This first International Workshop on Auger Spectroscopy and Electronic Struc ture - IWASES 1, held in Giardini-Naxos, Sicily, Italy, grew out of a number of longstanding collaborations between the various Institutes of Physics of the University of Messina, namely the Institute of the Structure of Matter, the In stitute of Theoretical Physics and the Institute of General Physics, and groups in other European countries at the University of Liverpool, England, the Insti tute of Physical Chemistry, University of Munich, and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Berlin, FRG. This workshop was the first to be devoted solely to Auger electron spectroscopy. This initiative was motivated by the enormous evolution of the field within the last decade to a point where it now extends far beyond the mere application of this spectroscopy as an analytical tool to determine surface cleanliness and surface composition. In fact, the Auger process, which is a multi-electron process, and which leaves the sample in a doubly (or higher) ionized state, is an invaluable probe for investigating excited states and, in particular, electron (or hole) correlation effects. These correlation effects play an important role for many physical prop erties of matter such as magnetism, screening processes, and electron stimulated desorption (ESD), to name but a few.
