Elastic and inelastic interactions of He and Ne atoms with metals surfaces

The experimental information accumulated in recent years on elastic and inelastic scattering of He and Ne atoms from metal surfaces is analysed by describing the atom-surface interaction as a superposition of pseudo-pairwise potentials. These are chosen according to the quite accurate potentials presently available for van der Waals pairs and take a phenomenological account for many body effects. The emerging picture is quite satisfactory and allows the physical interaction of a given atom-surface system to be predicted with excellent accuracy. In particular the coupling of He atoms to the surface vibrational modes is considered with attention focused on He inelastic scattering from Cu(001).