Quasi-resonant neutralization of He+ ions at a germanium surface

When low-energy He ions are scattered from a Ge surface, the fraction of positive ions exhibits characteristic oscillations as a function of ion energy. These oscillations are caused by quasi-resonant neutralization (qRN), a process which is active for materials with a narrow band nearly resonant with the unperturbed He 1s-level. In this paper we measure the fraction of He+ backscattered from Ge(100). In conjunction with recently developed theoretical methods, we extract quantitative information on the efficiency of qRN. Our evaluation reveals that qRN is a highly efficient process leading to ion fractions two orders of magnitude lower than in systems for which neutralization is only due to Auger processes.