Probing hydrogen bond strength in liquid water by resonant inelastic X-ray scattering.

Local probes of the electronic ground state are essential for understanding hydrogen bonding in aqueous environments. When tuned to the dissociative core-excited state at the O1s pre-edge of water, resonant inelastic X-ray scattering back to the electronic ground state exhibits a long vibrational progression due to ultrafast nuclear dynamics. We show how the coherent evolution of the OH bonds around the core-excited oxygen provides access to high vibrational levels in liquid water.

Compatibility of quantitative X-ray spectroscopy with continuous distribution models of water at ambient conditions.

The phase diagram of water harbors controversial views on underlying structural properties of its constituting molecular moieties, its fluctuating hydrogen-bonding network, as well as pair-correlation functions. In this work, long energy-range detection of the X-ray absorption allows us to unambiguously calibrate the spectra for water gas, liquid, and ice by the experimental atomic ionization cross-section. In liquid water, we extract the mean value of 1.

Decoupling Carrier Concentration and Electron-Phonon Coupling in Oxide Heterostructures Observed with Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering.

We report the observation of multiple phonon satellite features in ultrathin superlattices of the form nSrIrO_{3}/mSrTiO_{3} using resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS). As the values of n and m vary, the energy loss spectra show a systematic evolution in the relative intensity of the phonon satellites. Using a closed-form solution for the RIXS cross section, we extract the variation in the electron-phonon coupling strength as a function of n and m.

Ultrafast dissociation features in RIXS spectra of the water molecule.

In this combined theoretical and experimental study we report on an analysis of the resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) spectra of gas phase water via the lowest dissociative core-excited state |1s-1O4a11. We focus on the spectral feature near the dissociation limit of the electronic ground state. We show that the narrow atomic-like peak consists of the overlapping contribution from the RIXS channels back to the ground state and to the first valence excited state |1b-114a11 of the molecule.