Physics and Astronomy Calendar

Recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) results suggest a ubiquity and prominence of both quasiparticle and higher-energy correlated bands in cuprate systems. While ARPES is of great benefit to the understanding the electronic structure of correlated electron systems, the technique is limited in the sense that it probes only the occupied portion of the spectral function. In analogy to Raman spectroscopy, resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) is a two-particle spectroscopic technique involving both particle removal and particle addition states, and is thereby capable of probing the unoccupied states of an interacting many-electron system. In contrast to Raman spectroscopy, RIXS provides the additional capability of exploring momentum dependence. I will give an introduction to the burgeoning technique of RIXS, using cuprates as an example, and present new results on the energy structure of certain model systems. I will also present results that suggest how scattering geometry may act as a sensitive probe of excitation symmetry, and suggest directions for the technique in future experiments.