5d-5f Electric-multipole Transitions in Uranium Dioxide Probed by Non-resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering

Abstract

Non-resonant inelastic x ray scattering (NIXS) experiments have been performed to probe the 5d-5f electronic transitions at the uranium O(4,5) absorption edges in uranium dioxide. For small values of the scattering vector q, the spectra are dominated by dipole-allowed transitions encapsulated within the giant resonance, whereas for higher values of q the multipolar transitions of rank 3 and 5 give rise to strong and well-defined multiplet structure in the pre-edge region. The origin of the observed non-dipole multiplet structures is explained on the basis of many-electron atomic spectral calculations. The results obtained demonstrate the high potential of NIXS as a bulk-sensitive technique for the characterization of the electronic properties of actinide materials.

Submitted to Physical Review Letters on 31 December 2009

References in corpus (8)

• Nature of the 5f states in actinide metals
• What is the valence of a correlated solid? The double life of delta-plutonium
• Non-resonant inelastic x-ray scattering involving excitonic excitations
• High multipole transitions in NIXS: valence and hybridization in 4f systems
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• Many-body Electronic Structure of Metallic alpha-Uranium
• X-ray absorption branching ratio in actinides: LDA+DMFT approach
• Effective Operator for $dd$ Transitions in Nonresonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering

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