He- LiF surface interaction potential from fast atom diffraction.

A. SCHÜLLER; H. WINTER; M.S. GRAVIELLE; J. M. PRUNEDA; J.E. MIRAGLIA

Gatlinburg

Workshop; 18th International Workshop on Inelastic Ion-Surface Collisions (IISC).; 2010

Committee of the International Workshop on Inelastic Ion-Surface Collisions (IISC).

Recently new experiments have shown interference effects for grazing scattering of fast atoms from surfaces, where classical mechanics was supposed to be adequate. This unexpected diffraction phenomenon was found to be very sensitive to the projectile-surface interaction, which opens the way for a method to probe surface potentials with high accuracy. The aim of this work is to find out to what extent surface potentials derived from state-of-the-art ab-initio methods are capable of reproducing experimental diffraction patterns for grazing scattering of swift He atoms from a LiF(001) surface.