Importance of the polarization forces in He-metal surface interaction potential

In this paper we describe coupled channel calculation for atom-surface scattering for arbitrary potentials. We study, for the first time, the effect of the polarization-van der Waals forces. It is concluded that these forces are important for defining the repulsive part of the atom-metal surface potential. We study the He-Ni (110) system and present good agreement with experimental data for energies between 20 and 250 meV. © 1983.