Correlation Effects in X Ray Emission Spectroscopy

Abstract

X ray emission spectroscopy was, in the past, the unique method of study of atomic inner shells. In the last ten years, many new methods have been developed to study as well atomic inner shell properties as atomic collision mechanisms: x ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), precision Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), energy loss spectrometry, heavy ions bombardment, charge spectroscopy... The development of these new techniques, namely the photoelectron spectroscopy, led in 1965 to the direct observation, by Carlson and Krause (1) (2), of the multiexcitation and multiionization processes in photon absorbtion. At the same time the multiionization theory (shake theory) was developed by Carlson et al. (3) and by Aberg (4) (5) and there was then a renewal of interest for inner shell atomic properties. The x ray spectrometry received then a new impulse; the old data about x ray satellites were reviewed in the scope of the shake theory and numerous new weak lines corresponding to new processes were discovered: Radiative Auger satellites (RAE) (6), hypersatellites (7), Radiative Electron Rearrangment satellites (RER) (8).heavy ions satellites (9), multiplet splitting “ satellites “... Most of these new results allowed a better understanding of multielectron interactions in atoms.