State-to-state molecular-beam scattering of vibrationally excited NO from cleaved LiF(100) surfaces.

Survival of vibrational excitation has been observed for the scattering of NO prepared by a laser in a single well-defined quantum state, NO(v = 1, J = 2, tl = 2 ), from a cleaved LiF(100) surface. State-selective angular, velocity, rotational, and electronic distributions of these vibrationally elastically scattered molecules have also been obtained for the first time.