On charged particle dynamics near flat solid surface

Abstract

The motion of a non-relativistic charged particle near flat solid surface at small sliding angles is examined within the formalism of the effective potential composed by interaction of a particle with surface atoms and excited plasmons. As known, the presence of curvature in a solid surface can result in forming a set of discrete quantum states for a particle in the potential well of interaction with the surface.In this work we demonstrate that, at the glancing to flat-surface motion of fast charged particles, small channeling oscillations can be also observed for some special conditions. It is shown that the effective interaction potential represents a shallow well capable to hold a particle in a bound state. We succeeded to analytically determine the energy levels of a particle in such a potential well, as well as the critical angle for a particle to be trapped, in terms of known critical angle of channeling in crystals and a newly proposed function for simplification.