Tunneling features in semiconductor nanostructures

The most telling scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS) data available on the influence of nonequilibrium tunneling effects and electronic spectra reconstruction are reviewed and theoretically explained by self-consistently accounting for nonequilibrium electron distribution and the change (due to the tunneling current) in the electron density of states near the tunneling junction. The paper discusses the basic ideas of the self-consistent tunneling theory, which forms the basis for experimental research and which allows many effects observed in STM/STS experiments to be explained and new phenomena to be predicted. (reviews of topical problems)