The Interaction of Vibrationally Excited Hydrogen with a Copper Surface

The survival probability of H_2 (v = 1, J = 1) scattered from a clean Cu(110) surface has been measured and compared with the survival probability of hydrogen molecules in the ground state to show the role of vibrational energy of the incident molecules. For a translational energy of 78 meV, H_2(v = 0, J = 1) had a ratio of scattered flux/incident flux = 1.01 +/-.01. The same quantity for vibrationally excited molecules was measured to be 0.74 +/- 0.13. The effect of surface coverage on the reflectivity has been studied and possible loss channels are discussed.