Elastic and inelastic scattering of4dinner-shell electrons in(Y,Gd)2O3studied by synchrotron-radiation excitation

Abstract

Excitations within the $4f$ shell of ${\mathrm{Gd}}^{3+}$ in $({\mathrm{Y},\mathrm{G}\mathrm{d})}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ are observed by resonant elastic and inelastic soft x-ray scattering with synchrotron radiation. Inelastic scattering takes place when exciting ${4d}^{10}{4f}^{7}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{4d}^{9}{4f}^{8}$ transitions and extends over an energy range of about 10 eV. The features can be assigned to the net transition from the ${}^{8}{S}_{7/2}$ ground state to the sextet multiplets of the ${4f}^{7}$ configuration in ${\mathrm{Gd}}^{3+},$ which have the same parity as the ground state. The inelastic scattering is maximal when the excitation energy is tuned to the ${4d}^{9}{4f}^{8}{(}^{6}D)$ intermediate state.