Core and shallow-core d - to f -shell excitations in rare-earth metals

We report on the results of probing the light lanthanide metals Ce, Pr, and Nd with inelastic x-ray and electron scattering. Aberration-corrected transmission electron microscope-based electron spectroscopy and nonresonant inelastic x-ray scattering are shown to be in a high degree of accord and here serve as complementary probes of electronic structure. The high resolution and high signal-to-noise electron technique allows for the measurement of the complex and subtle excitation spectra in the lanthanide metals, validating the applicability of the screened trivalent atomic model used for these materials. In addition, the momentum transfer dependence of the x-ray scattering is extracted and compared against atomic calculations for the most tightly bound excitonic resonances, which provides a direct test of the predicted atomic radial wave functions.