A comparative study of the He–Sb(111) interaction potential from close-coupling calculations and helium atom scattering experiments

The exact elastic close-coupling formalism is used to compare the performance of several interaction potentials suggested in literature for describing the measured elastic diffraction peak intensities in helium scattering experiments. The coupling parameters have been analytically calculated for the corrugated Morse potential on a hexagonal surface structure and adapted for usage with similar interaction potentials. The potentials used have been fitted to previously known bound state energies complemented by two additional levels which are found by improving energy resolution. It is established that the shifted Morse potential reproduces the experimental He–Sb(111) bound state more closely than the other considered potential shapes. The performance of several interaction potentials in describing the elastic scattering intensities is presented and discussed. Morse and Morse-related potentials provide the best compromise for the description of elastic scattering intensities. The different effects of the potential shape were determined by comparing the calculated scattering intensities.