DYNAMICAL ELECTRON-SCATTERING FROM GROWING SURFACES

Statistical methods developed for the evaluation of the electrical conductivity in metals are applied to formulate a dynamical theory for the scattering of high-energy electrons from a rough growing surface. The high-energy forms of the Dyson and Bethe-Salpeter equations are used to identify the correlations that dominate the behaviour of the scattered intensities. Using an exactly solvable model of epitaxial growth, we find that for Bragg conditions of incidence the diffuse scattering by morphological fluctuations is largely responsible for the oscillations of the reflected intensities and for the non-linear enhancement of the ''Kikuchi'' features in the electron diffraction pattern.