Scattering of N₂ from Ag(001)

Experimental and theoretical studies of the scattering of nitrogen molecules from the (001) face of silver are presented. Angular and time‐of‐flight distributions of the scattered molecules have been measured for incident N 2 energies between 7 and 96 kJ/mol, and for surface temperatures between 205 and 600 K. Stochastic trajectory simulations have been carried out for the same conditions. Good agreement between experiment and theory has been obtained. The angular distributions are shown to be very sensitive to the extent of corrugation of the gas—surface interaction potential, but are relatively insensitive to rotational energy transfer. Scattered velocity distributions also show only a small dependence on rotational energy transfer.