Chaotic scattering of He atoms off a Cu surface with corrugated Morse potential

TL;DR

This paper models helium atom scattering off a copper surface using a corrugated Morse potential and demonstrates the presence of chaotic scattering regions and oscillatory motions at high energies.

Contribution

It introduces a Hamiltonian model with fitted parameters showing chaotic scattering and oscillatory behaviors, advancing understanding of atom-surface interactions.

Findings

Chaotic scattering occurs at high incident energies.

The system exhibits oscillatory motions.

Chaotic regions depend on specific potential coefficients.

Abstract

We consider a Hamiltonian system that models the scattering of helium atoms off a copper surface. The interaction between the He and the Cu atoms is described by a corrugated Morse potential. Using corrugation coefficients values in the potential obtained by fitting to experimental values, we prove that, provided some coefficient of an auxiliary function is different from 0, there are regions of the phase space, corresponding to sufficiently large energy of the incident atom, where the scattering is chaotic. Furthermore, we prove that the system has oscillatory motions.