Lα line shapes of cobalt, nickel and copper near the threshold of excitation

Abstract

The Lα line shapes of Co, Ni and Cu, observed at electron bombarding energies slightly above the excitation threshold, are corrected for instrumental window broadening and unfolded to eliminate the width of the initial L III level. The final level widths, about 1.8, 1.6 and 0.5 eV, respectively, appear to be much smaller than the widths of density-of-states distributions in the filled part of the conduction band. This shows that Lα emission must be due to transitions between localized energy states of the metal ion.