Determining the electron-phonon coupling strength from Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering at transition metal L-edges

Abstract

We show that high-resolution Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) provides direct, element-specific and momentum-resolved information on the electron-phonon (e-p) coupling strength. Our theoretical analysis indicates how the e-p coupling can be extracted from RIXS spectra by determining the differential phonon scattering cross-section. An alternative manner to extract the coupling is to use the one- and two-phonon loss ratio, which is governed by the e-p coupling strength and the core-hole lifetime. This allows the determination of the e-p coupling on an absolute energy scale.