Selective adsorption of 4He on clean LiF (001) surfaces

The selective adsorption of ⁴He on in-situ cleaved LiF surfaces has been studied under improved resolution. The main results are as follows: (1) There are four bound states in the surface potential well, at energies of ?5.8, ?2.2, ?0.6 and ?0.1 meV. The lowest three levels were reported previously. (2) Most of the structure previously designated as “fine structure” is due either to transitions to these four levels via various small reciprocal lattice vectors or to the opening of diffraction channels. (3) The transitions involving the 01] and 01?] reciprocal lattice vectors (i.e., the ones nearly perpendicular to the incident wave vector) are strong; as much as 85% of the specular intensity may be removed. Transitions via the other small reciprocal lattice vectors are much weaker. (4) The widths of the lines are consistent with the velocity distribution, which has a half-width of about 2%. (5) The observed energies agree fairly well with those calculated by Tsuchida for a zeta-function potential, but are not consistent with a Morse potential.