Atom-surface scattering dynamics at hyperthermal energies.

We have recently reported non-adiabatic excitations at single crystal surfaces due to hyperthermal atomic collisions. These include e-h sup + excitations and ion emission. As part of a systematic study of the dynamics underlying these events we report molecular beam scattering of hyperthermal Xe atoms over an energy range (1 E sub i (eV) 10) from single crystal surfaces of GaAs(110), Ag(100), and Ge(100). The angular distributions from the corrugated surfaces show sharp backscattered rainbow maxima related to the topography of the crystal surface. The large energy loss for all surfaces on average scales with the energy of local normal motion. A simple binary interaction model is developed which accounts for much of the phenomena observed from corrugated surfaces.