Temperature Dependence in Rainbow Scattering of Hyperthermal Ar Atoms from LiF(001)

Recent experiments have reported measurements of rainbow scattering features in the angular distributions of hyperthermal Ar colliding with LiF(001) [Kondo et al., J. Chem. Phys. 122, 244713 (2005)]. A semiclassical theory of atom-surface collisions recently developed by the authors that includes multiphonon energy transfers is used to explain the temperature dependence of the measured scattered angular distribution spectra.