Surface diffusion anomaly near a substrate phase transition: H on W(100)

Using a linear optical diffraction method, we have experimentally studied the long predicted diffusion anomalous behavior for H/W(100) near the reconstructive phase transition of the W(100) substrate. This anomaly manifests itself in the form of a strong dip in the diffusion coefficient D at the transition temperature T(C). We interpret the strong reduction of D as a result of the diverging friction damping near the transition. The finite dip in D instead of a vanishing D at T(C) also demonstrates the importance of the non-Markovian (memory) deviation from the simple instantaneous damping picture.