RENORMALIZED MULTIPLE-SCATTERING THEORY OF PHOTOELECTRON DIFFRACTION

The current multiple-scattering cluster techniques for the calculation of x-ray photoelectron and Auger-electron diffraction patterns consume much computer time in the intermediate-energy range (200-1000 eV); in fact, because of the large value of the electron mean free path and of the large forward-scattering amplitude at such energies, the electron samples a relatively large portion of the crystal, so that the number of paths to be considered becomes dramatically high. An alternative method is developed in the present paper: instead of calculating the individual contribution from each single path, the scattering matrix of each plane parallel to the surface is calculated with a renormalization process that calculates every scattering event in the plane up to infinite order. Similarly the scattering between two planes is calculated up to infinite order, and the double-plane scattering matrix is introduced. The process may then be applied to the calculation of a larger set of atomic layers. The advantage of the method is that a relatively small number of internuclear vectors have been used to obtain convergence in the calculation.