Direct inelastic scattering Ar from Pt(111)

High resolution angularly resolved time of flight distributions are presented for a supersonic argon beam scattering from a clean well-characterized Pt(111) single crystal. A novel presentation of the resulting velocity and angular flux information in terms of iso-flux contour maps in Cartesian velocity space allows the scattering process to be decomposed into three mutually independent directions defined by the surface normal (z), parallel to the surface and in the scattering plane (y), and parallel to the surface but perpendicular to y and z(x). The iso-flux contour maps appear as nested ovals with principal axes oriented parallel to the above defined directions; axis length decreases in the order z, y, x. The corresponding variances in the x, y, and z velocities vary directly with the surface temperature. Three beam energy regimes are evident and are discussed in terms of the diminishing effect of the attractive well which occurs for increasing beam energies and the increasing effect of short range phenomena prevalent at high incident beam energies. Accomodation coefficients were defined and measured for the y and z directions and were 0.1 and 0.45, respectively, indicating the degree to which parallel and perpendicular momenta are not conserved in a single collision. Geometric scattering by instantaneous surface roughness is experimentally shown to be negligible for this system for beam energies <20 000 K indicating that the scattering is by the finite momentum of the surface. © 1983 American Institute of Physics.