Phonon contribution in grazing-incidence fast atom diffraction from insulator surfaces

Autor: Frisco, L., Gravielle, M. S.
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: Phys. Rev. A 100, 062703 (2019)
Druh dokumentu: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.100.062703
Popis: We study the effect of crystal lattice vibrations on grazing-incidence fast atom diffraction (GIFAD) from insulator surfaces. To describe the phonon contribution to GIFAD we introduce a semiquantum method, named Phonon-Surface Initial Value Representation (P-SIVR), which represents the surface with a harmonic crystal model, while the scattering process is described by means of the Surface Initial Value Representation approach, including phonon excitations. Expressions for the partial scattering probabilities involving zero- and one- phonon exchange are derived. In particular, the P-SIVR approach for zero-phonon scattering is applied to study the influence of thermal lattice vibrations on GIFAD patterns for Ne/LiF(001) at room temperature. It is found that the thermal lattice fluctuations introduce a polar-angle spread into the projectile distributions, which can affect the relative intensities of the interference maxima, even giving rise to interference sub-patterns depending on the incidence conditions. Present results are in agreement with the available experiments.
Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures
Databáze: arXiv