Competition between Auger and resonant charge transfer in surface ion neutralization

The present Letter describes a many-electron theory of charge transfer in ion-surface scattering, where the principal charge-transfer processes — Auger and resonance — are both treated on an equal footing. When the participating substrate band is wide, a very simple approximate solution is obtained. For slow ions, the dominating process is the one with the longer range of interaction, whereas, for fast ions, the strength of the interaction is the dominating feature.