Field ionization of helium in a supersonic beam: Kinetic energy of neutral atoms and probability of their field ionization

High detection efficiency combined with spatial resolution on a nm-scale makes the field ionization process a promising candidate for spatially resolved neutral particles detection. The effective cross-sectional area σeff can serve as a measure for the effectiveness of such a field ion detector. In the present contribution, we combine quantum-mechanical calculations of the field-modified electron density distribution near the tungsten tip surface and of the resulting local field distributions, performed using the functional integration method, with a classical treatment of the atom trajectories approaching the tip in order to calculate the σeff values for ionization of free He atoms over an apex of a tungsten field emitter tip. The calculated values are compared with experimental data for supersonic He atomic beams at two different temperatures 95 and 298 K.