Besides generating the attractive well in the vicinity of a surface, van der Waals forces cause another interesting effect in atom-surface scasttering: they modify the phase of the atom along its semiclassical trajectory, determining thereby a very large scattering cross section from either adsorbed impurities or growth hillocks. Such effects are discussed and calculated in the framework of the hard-wall model for the unperturbed surface, and the results are compared with the experimental data obtained for CO on Pt by the Jülich group and for the Pd growth hillocks observed (in the form of truncated pyramids) on MgO by the Marseille group.
Configuration entropy and confinement-deconfinement transition in higher-dimensional hard wall model
