Energy transfer from fast atomic projectiles to a crystal lattice under channeling conditions

Neutral Ne atoms with keV energies are scattered under channeling conditions, i.e., at a glancing angle of incidence, from a LiF(001) surface. By means of a time-of-flight method with a pulsed neutral beam, energy distributions for scattered projectiles are obtained. We find for this specific system that the small energy transferred to the crystal lattice during channeling via binary collisions with large impact parameters dominates the dissipation of projectile energy, whereas all other excitations of the solid can be brought to a negligible level.