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Interference between One- and Two-Electron Channels in Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering

Johan Söderström ^1,*, Marcus Agåker ^1,2, Ji-Cai Liu ^3,4,†, Takashi Tokushima ², Anirudha Ghosh ², Conny Såthe ², Jian Wang^3,4, Andreas Pantelis Frey Koudouridis¹, Moritz Grunwald-Delitz ⁵ et al.

Thomas M. Baumann ⁵, Michael Meyer ⁵, Manuel Harder ⁵, Zhong Yin ⁶, Olle Björneholm ¹, Joseph Nordgren ¹, Stephan Fritzsche ^7,8,9, Victor Kimberg ^10,‡, Jan-Erik Rubensson ¹, and Faris Gel’mukhanov ^10,11

¹Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, 751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
²MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University, P.O. Box 118, SE-22100 Lund, Sweden
³School of Mathematics and Physics, North China Electric Power University, 102206 Beijing, China
⁴Hebei Key Laboratory of Physics and Energy Technology, North China Electric Power University, 071000 Baoding, China
⁵European XFEL, Holzkoppel 4, 22869 Schenefeld, Germany
⁶International Center for Synchrotron Radiation Innovation Smart, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8572, Japan
⁷GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Planckstraße 1, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany
⁸Helmholtz-Institut Jena, Fröbelstieg 3, 07743 Jena, Germany
⁹Theoretisch-Physikalisches Institut, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Max-Wien-Platz 1, 07743 Jena, Germany
¹⁰Theoretical Chemistry and Biology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
¹¹Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, Institute for Methods and Instrumentation for Synchrotron Radiation Research, Albert-Einstein-Straße 15, D-12489 Berlin, Germany

^*Contact author: Johan.Soderstrom@physics.uu.se
^†Contact author: jicailiu@ncepu.edu.cn
^‡Contact author: kimberg@kth.se

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 233001 – Published 1 December, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/c5mk-trlz

Abstract

Interference between scattering channels is observed in resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) at the Ne $K$ threshold. Final states with $| 2 p^{- 1} n p ⟩$ as the main configuration are populated via $| 1 s^{- 1} n^{'} p ⟩$ resonances, where large-amplitude one-electron ( $n^{'} = n$ ) channels interfere with small-amplitude two-electron ( $n^{'} \neq n$ ) channels. The interference is manifested in an asymmetric line profile where the two-electron resonance occurs in the tail region of the one-electron resonance. In RIXS, this slowly varying tail plays the role of the continuum for the Fano effect. The asymmetric profile is well modeled by means of a single asymmetry parameter, determined by the amplitudes of the scattering channels and the energy separation between the resonances.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 233001– Published 1 December, 2025

Vol. 135, Iss. 23 — 5 December 2025

Received 15 September 2025
Accepted 27 October 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/c5mk-trlz

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by Bibsam.

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Interference between One- and Two-Electron Channels in Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering

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