Dynamics of spin exchange in alkali atom-surface scattering

We have investigated spin dependencies of the survival probability of spin-polarized alkali atom (K, Rb, Cs) scattered at model target surfaces Fe(001) in the resonant charge transfer process. The difference between majority and minority surface spin densities of states is theoretically taken into account. The survival probability of atoms with spin polarization along majority spins increases drastically against decreasing the interaction time across the lifetime of atomic level, while that with spin polarization along majority spin remains negligibly small. The result strongly suggests that the spin-polarized atom-surface scattering method is quite sensitive to the spin density of states (DOS) above the Fermi energy of a metallic surface, that are hard to access in conventional methods. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.