Skimming-trajectory effect for energy loss of medium-energy He ions passing along major crystal axes of KI(001) and RbI(001)

Abstract

The energy loss of an ion passing along a major crystal axis before and/or after undergoing a large-angle collision is strongly enhanced, because its path is close to a lattice-site atom located at the crystal axis; this is the so-called skimming effect. One may find this effect in high-resolution medium-energy ion scattering (MEIS) spectra from submonolayers of single crystals. In the present study, the MEIS spectra were observed for mediumenergy He + ions backscattered from KI(001) and RbI(001) crystals at various scattering geometries. The observed surface peaks were decomposed into scattering components from top-, second-, and third-layer atoms considering the hitting probabilities, which were derived from Monte Carlo simulations of ion trajectories, taking account of the enhanced and correlated thermal vibrations. The results obtained here demonstrate that the energy loss of the ions which move skimming trajectories is expressed reasonably well by the impact-parameter-dependent energy loss calculated using the nonperturbative coupled-channel method.