ROLE OF ROTATIONAL MOTION IN THE DISSOCIATIVE ADSORPTION AND ASSOCIATIVE DESORPTION DYNAMICS OF D-2 CU(111)/

We point out the importance of the incidence energy of D-2 to account for the nonmonotonic behavior of the adsorption probability of D-2/Cu( 111) as a function of its initial rotational state. We then show that a very prominent initial cooling, a mild heating, and then a final coo ling of the rotational temperature with respect to the surface tempera ture, for increasing rotational energies, should be observed for the d esorption of D-2 from Cu(111). We finally show that the desorption res ults could be consistently connected with the adsorption probability d ata.