Velocity distributions of sputtered excited atoms

The first direct measurements are reported of the velocity distributions of sputtered atoms in excited states with electronic configurations completely different from the ground state. In contrast to previous work, the measured distributions for both the singlet and triplet metastable D states of Ba atoms showed no energy thresholds and had most probable energies similar to those of sputtered ground-state atoms.Peer reviewedElectrical and Computer Engineerin