Resonant inelastic soft x-ray scattering of CdS: A two-dimensional electronic structure map approach

Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) with soft x rays is uniquely suited to study the electronic structure of a variety of materials, but is currently limited by low (fluorescence yield) count rates. This limitation is overcome with a high-transmission spectrometer that allows to measure soft x-ray RIXS ``maps.'' The S L2,3 RIXS map of CdS is discussed and compared with density-functional calculations. The map allows the extraction of decay channel-specific ``absorption spectra'' giving detailed insight into the wave functions of occupied and unoccupied electronic states.