Dynamics at Metal Surfaces: Effects of Electronic Transitions on Atomic Motion

Dynamical processes at metal surfaces are strongly influenced by electronic transitions, even at thermal energies. Excitation of electron-hole pairs provides a mechanism for energy transfers. Resonant charge exchange is prevalent, in part due to image force stabilization of ionic species, resulting in lifetime broadening of potential energy hypersurfaces. Crossing and avoided crossing of hypersurfaces are also common. A trajectory based description of atomic motion is under development which incorporates electronic transitions in a self-consistent way. Trajectories evolve on complex energy hypersurfaces, and split into branches as dictated by electronic transition probabilities. Initial application of this approach will be presented.