Rotational Energy Transfer in Direct Inelastic Surface Scattering: NO on Ag(111)

Abstract

Rotational state distributions for NO scattered from Ag(111) have been measured over the incident kinetic energy range of 0.1 to 1.7 eV with use of rotationally cold molecular beam and laser-induced-fluorescence detection. The measured distributions divide into two parts: a low rotational state portion ($J\ensuremath{\lesssim}20.5$) which is described by a Boltzmann distribution and a high-$J$ portion which shows a broad structure tentatively interpreted as resulting from a rotational rainbow.