Coherent Reflection of He Atom Beams from Rough Surfaces at Grazing Incidence
We report coherent reflection of thermal He atom beams from various microscopically rough surfaces at grazing incidence. For a sufficiently small normal component k{sub z} of the incident wave vector of the atom the reflection probability is found to be a function of k{sub z} only. This behavior is explained by quantum reflection at the attractive branch of the Casimir-van der Waals interaction potential. For larger values of k{sub z} the overall reflection probability decreases rapidly and is found to also depend on the parallel component k{sub x} of the wave vector. The material specific k{sub x} dependence for this classic reflection at the repulsive branch of the potential is discussed in terms of an averaging out of the surface roughness under grazing incidence conditions.