Surface analysis with grazing incidence fast atom diffraction (GIFAD)

Patrick Rousseau (1, 2) , Hocine Khemliche (1) , Nenad Bundaleski (1) , Pierre Soulisse (1) , Anouchah Momeni (1, 3) , Philippe Roncin (1)

1 LCAM - Laboratoire des collisions atomiques et moléculaires
2 CIMAP - UMR 6252 - Centre de recherche sur les Ions, les MAtériaux et la Photonique
3 LERMA - Laboratoire d'Etude du Rayonnement et de la Matière en Astrophysique

Grazing collisions at surfaces offer rather contrasted conditions. For well ordered flat surfaces, the scattering is spread among several lattice sites, each of which produces only a tiny elementary deflection. If, in addition, the atomic projectile is aligned along a crystallographic direction, the surface appears as made of parallel furrows or as a washboard which act as a diffraction grating for the atomic wave. We will show that the analysis of characteristic diffraction pattern recorded on a position sensitive detector located downstream allows a sensitive measure of the shape of the surface electronic density. A modified Debye Waller factor is proposed to explain the observed diffraction signal.

Domains: General Physics [physics.gen-ph]

Patrick Rousseau, Hocine Khemliche, Nenad Bundaleski, Pierre Soulisse, Anouchah Momeni, et al.. Surface analysis with grazing incidence fast atom diffraction (GIFAD). Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2008, 133, pp.012013. ⟨cea-00358934⟩