Atomic Scattering and Diffraction

The de Broglie wavelength associated with helium atoms is given by 

Thus atoms with thermal energy of about 0.02 eV have X = 1 A and can readily diffract from surfaces. A beam of atoms is chopped with a variable frequency chopper before striking the surface. This way, an alternating intensity beam signal is generated at the mass spectrometer detector, that is readily separated from the noise due to helium atoms in the background. 

Rainbow scattering has been detected from high Miller Index stepped platinum surfaces. Typical rainbow scattering patterns are shown in Fig. 4.7. The increase in intensity of the surface rainbows, as displayed by this figure, for an increase in the angle of incidence, qualitatively follows the trend predicted from calculations by McClure 

Here D is the depth of the atomic potential as sensed by the incident atom and Mg and Ms are the masses of the scattering atoms and surface atoms, respectively, and 6 is the surface Debye temperature. For the diffracting X-rays and electrons that have much 

Another important property of the specularly scattered fraction of atoms is their great sensitivity to surface disorder. On scattering from a well ordered surface, nearly 15% of the scattered helium atoms appear in the specular helium beam. This fraction decreases to 1 to 5% when the surface is disordered. Thus measurements of the fraction of specularly scattered helium can provide information on the degree of atomic disorder in the solid surface. 

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