A new method of analysing shapes of RHEED intensity oscillations observed during epitaxial growth of ultrathin films is presented. The intensity of the specular electron beam is computed by solving the one-dimensional Schrödinger equation. The method can be used for interpreting data collected at very low glancing angle (< 1°) of the incident electron beam. In the paper we show numerically determined shapes of the intensity oscillations for different cases of settling of atoms at surfaces of growing films.PACS numbers: 61.14.-x, 68.55.-aThe phenomenon of RHEED oscillations was first observed in the early eighties [1]. Since that time RHEED has been established as a very helpful technique for preparing ultrathin films and investigating their structural arrangements. Some authors proposed qualitative explanations of the origin of the RHEED intensity oscillations [2-5]. However, so far, only one quantitative approach was introduced. This approach proposed by Cohen and coworkers [6] is based on the kinematical theory f diffraction and is expected to work properly when socalled off-Bragg condition is fulfilled by the value of the glancing angle of incident electron beam. In this paper we propose another quantitative approach. We suggest to solve the one-dimensional Schrödinger equation to describe the changes of the intensity of the specular electron beam. Appriopriately adopted numerical methods of three-dimensional RHEED dynamical theories [7][8][9][10][11][12][13] can be applied to solve the above-mentioned equation. The idea of the use the one-dimensional wave equation for the RHEED case is well-known in literature [5,[14][15]. However, this concept leads to a conclusion that the specular beam intensity does not depend on the
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