Interaction of Helium with a Metal Surface: Determination of Corrugation Profile of Cu(110)

Starting from a microscopic description of the interaction of a helium atom with a metal surface, a simple approximate result is derived which shows that the lateral corrugation of the repulsive potential decreases exponentially with distance $z$ from the surface. For Cu(110) this theory leads to an interaction potential that reproduces all the observed bound states and gives a quantitative fit of recent helium diffraction data taken at various incident energies and angles.