Carrier excitation yield from atomic collisions at semiconductor surfaces.

The following is a short summary manuscript for inclusion in the Springer-Verlag book of the proceedings of the Solvay Conference on Surface Science, held December 14-18, 1987 in Austin, Texas. We have furthered our understanding of the collisional excitation of carriers at semiconductor surfaces by hyperthermal neutral rare gas atoms. We have introduced optical carrier excitation in order to characterize the samples, to determine carrier recombination rates, and to calibrate the collisional e sup - h sup + excitation probability for Xe on the InP(110) surface.