Thermal diffuse scattering in grazing incidence diffraction

Abstract

Inelastic scattering of hard x-ray radiation by thermal phonons was studied by thex-ray grazing incidence diffraction technique. This method allows one to separatethe contribution of the surface phonons from that of the bulk thermalexcitations by tuning the penetration depth. It is shown that for smallerpenetration depths the surface contribution to thermal diffuse scattering isapproximately double the bulk one. The experimental results confirm thetheoretical predictions derived from the Green function formalism.