On obtaining surface time profiles from pulsed molecular beam scattering time-of-flight measurements.

The use of very short gas pulses to obtain the surface time response of a reactive system is a powerful technique. However, reconstructing the time profile from red data can be a non-trivial problem. In particular we consider the common situation where the residence time profile falls sharply at t=0 and the flight time to the detector is of a similar magnitude to the residence time. In the presence of noise, deconvolution of the (Maxwell-Boltzmann) flight profile is not a simple matter. Three methods; model-based forward convolution, Optimum (Wiener) filtering/deconvolution and model-free forward convolution, are explored and an overall strategy is suggested.