Ab-initio potential for the He-Ag(110) interaction investigated investigated using grazing incidence fast atom diffraction

C.A. RÍOS RUBIANO; G. A. BOCAN; M.S. GRAVIELLE; N. BUNDALESKI; H. KHEMLICHE; P. RONCIN

PHYSICAL REVIEW A - ATOMIC, MOLECULAR AND OPTICAL PHYSICS

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2013 vol. 87 p. 12903 - 12903

1050-2947

Experimental diffraction patterns produced by grazing scattering of fast helium atoms from a Ag(110) surfaceare used as a sensitive tool to test an ab initio potential model derived from accurate density-functional theory(DFT) calculations. The scattering process is described by means of the surface eikonal approximation, whichis a distorted-wave method that includes the quantum interference between contributions coming from differentprojectile paths, taking into account the complete corrugation of the three-dimensional projectile-surface potential.A fairly good agreement between the theoretical and experimental momentum distributions is found for incidencealong different low-indexed crystallographic directions. This agreement is indicative of the quality of the DFTpotential. The effective corrugation of the interaction potential across the incidence channel is also investigated.