ATOM-SURFACE SCATTERING IN THE CLASSICAL LIMIT - TEMPERATURE AND ENERGY-DEPENDENCE

The backscattered intensity from a beam of atomic projectiles directed towards the surface of a many-body target can be expressed in terms o f simple closed-form expressions in the single-collision classical reg ime. Two well-known limits, which exhibit significantly different depe ndence on the target temperature and incident energy, arise for the ca ses in which the target is considered either as a collection of discre te scattering points or as a flat repulsive surface. By examining a ta rget potential that varies from the case of a weakly corrugated smooth repulsive surface to strongly corrugated cores a classical expression is derived that exhibits a continuous distribution of temperature dep endencies that connect and bridge the extreme behavior of the two well -known classical limits.