Plasmons in Liquid Metals Studied by Inelastic X-ray Scattering

Abstract

Abstract Plasmon is a collective excitation of electrons in materials. Since plasmon can be observed in a wide range of the phase diagram including the solid, liquid, and classical plasma phases, the investigation of the electronic states through the plasmon is of great significance in order to obtain a unified insight into the electronic states in various phases of matter. Inelastic X-ray scattering (IXS) is an ideal tool for such an investigation, because it can be applied to the samples in the liquid state and those in an extreme conditions. In this review, we discuss IXS results on the plasmons in liquid metals, and also describe a formulation to predict the plasmon energy and the lifetime in liquid metals. The formulation takes into account the effect of the ionic structure within the nearly free electron approximation, and reproduces well the experimental results.