Elastic reflection of low-energy electrons from polycrystalline gold targets

Monte Carlo calculations to study the influence of solid-state, polarization, exchange and relativistic effects on the angular distribution and the reflection coefficient for electrons elastically reflected from gold surfaces have been performed. Elastic differential cross sections were determined using relativistic Dirac equations with a solid-atom potential including the polarization and exchange effects. Inelastic differential inverse mean free paths were computed using the extended Drude dielectric function for volume and surface excitations. These showed that the polarization effect made a contribution to elastic differential cross sections at small scattering angles, whereas, the exchange and relativistic effects contributed to these cross sections at large scattering angles. These effects are important to the angular distribution and the elastic reflection coefficient for electron energies below 400 eV. Monte Carlo results calculated in this work are in very good agreement with experimental data.