High-Energy Excitations in Molecules and Solids

Abstract

In these lectures we consider high energy probes of electronic states in molecules and solids as, basically, those involving energies sufficient to reach inner core states of the constituent atoms. From a more fundamental point of view any interaction process involving an energy transfer to the target atoms of ħω >> k_BT could be considered as “high energy”; from an operational point of view, the fact that the binding energies of inner core levels can be specifically attributed to a given element with atomic number Z provides a very important tool for local investigation in a chemically complex material.