One-electron excitations, correlation effects, and the plasmon in cesium metal

We study the dynamical electronic response of Cs at a first-principles level. The spatially localized 5p semicore shell induces a physical interplay between crystal local fields and electron correlations, leading to a novel, and relatively large, many-body shift of the plasmon energy. This effect, combined with that of one-electron transitions into empty states near the plasmon energy, yields a plasmon dispersion curve which is in excellent agreement with experiment for small wave vectors. In addition, our results feature a flat dispersion for large wave vectors, in qualitative agreement with experiment.