We have measured large orientations for Ar n states excited by 300-keV Ar + impact on solid Cu surfaces at grazing incidence. We report circulary polarized light fractions of up to 76% and interpret the excitation mechanism as an orbital-angular-momentum effect. As an application of this new excitation scheme, a zero-field level-crossing experiment is presented.We report new experiments which confirm and extend the recent observation that the excitation of fast ion beams by impact with inclined solid amorphous surfaces can lead to appreciable excited-state orientations. 1 We present measurements of angular distributions of the scattered ion current which support the assumption that near grazing incidence, there is a well-defined direction for the outgoing oriented atoms, as in "tilted-foil" experiments. 2 We also give the first results for the application of this "tilted-surface" effect to atomic level-crossing studies.The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1. With the axes indicated, the direction of observation was along Ox. The incident beam direction is along Oz, the target surface normal makes an angle a with the -y axis in the yz plane, and we anticipate the results given below by ascribing an angle 9 to the average forward-scattered particle direction. The target was amorphous Cu, of dimensions 30 mmxl5 mmxl mm, and its surface to spectrometer FIG. 1. Experimental setup. The beam cross section is 0.5x 5 mm 2 " was mechanically polished flat to 2 jum. It was mounted on a shaft which was along Ox, and the angle a could be set to a precision of ± 0.17°. A 1-mm-diam pickup wire was mounted parallel to and off center from the x axis in such a way as to describe a circle of radius 7 cm about that axis. The scattered beam current could be measured with this wire as a function of y, in 1.4° steps. The pickup wire and the target could be held independently at variable potentials to suppress secondary-electron emission.The optical system consisted of an achromatic A/4 plate and a linear polarizer, followed by a single imaging lens, a 0.3-m grating spectrometer, and a photo multiplier tube in photon-counting mode. The viewing region was approximately 7 mm in diameter in the yz plane, and was centered on the x axis. Spectra were built up by repetitive sweeping of the wavelength proportional to collected charge of the unbiased target (our results are independent of secondary-electron emission) and recording the photon counts in a synchronized multichannel scaler. Similarly level-crossing curves were obtained by sweeping the magnetic flux B z , proportional to time at less than ± 5% beam fluctuations and recording photons of a particular line and polarization. B z , was applied by Helmholtz coils aligned along the scattered beam direction Oz'.In order to determine excited-state orientations of free scattered ions we measured the normalized Stokes parameter S/I= {la" -Io + )/(Ia" + Ia + ) by rotation of the A/4 plate in steps of 90°, where Jcr" and Ia + are, respectively, right and left circularly polarized light inte...