Rainbow scattering under axial surface channeling from a KCl(001) surface

Fast He, Ne, Ar, and N atoms with projectile energies from 1 up to 60 keV are scattered under grazing polar angles of incidence from a flat and clean KCl(001) surface. For the scattering along low-index directions (axial surface channeling) we observe pronounced peaks in the angular distributions of scattered projectiles which can be attributed to rainbow scattering. From classical trajectory calculations based on universal and individual pair as well as density functional theory (DFT) potentials, we obtained corresponding rainbow angles for comparison with the experimental data. Fair agreement was found for DFT and individual pair potentials calculated from Hartree-Fock wave functions.