Unified description of rotating-molecule--surface interactions: Comparison with experiment

From previous experiments on surface light-induced drift it was found that the coefficient for tangential momentum accommodation in molecule-surface collisions can increase with increasing angular momentum of the molecule. By contrast, various molecular-beam-type experiments yielded the opposite result. These seemingly conflicting data are reconciled in a unified picture describing various phenomena related to molecule-surface interaction for rotating molecules. Using physical arguments it is demonstrated that the accommodation as a function of rotational quantum number should peak around the thermal value, decreasing both for lower and higher rotational quantum numbers of the incoming molecule