A Comparative Study of the Valence Electronic Excitations of N_2 by Inelastic X-ray and Electron Scattering

Abstract

Bound state, valence electronic excitation spectra of N_2 are probed by nonresonant inelastic x-ray and electron scattering. Within the usual theoretical treatments, dynamical structure factors derived from the two probes should be identical. However, we find strong disagreements outside the dipole scattering limit, even at high probe energies. This suggests an unexpectedly important contribution from intra-molecular multiple scattering of the probe electron from core electrons or the nucleus. These effects should grow progressively stronger as the atomic number of the target species increases.

Submitted to Physical Review Letters April 27, 2010. 12 pages including 2 figure pages.

References in corpus (2)

• Nature of the 5f states in actinide metals
• Inelastic Scattering from Core-electrons: a Multiple Scattering Approach

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