Electronic Structure of Pu and Pu Compounds from Photoelectron Spectroscopy
Abstract
A comparison between the measured photoemission spectra and various computational schemes for the delta phase of Pu metal reveals a wide range of mechanisms for treating the inherent complexities of plutonium electronic structure. Photoemission data for the alpha and delta phases of Pu metal along with results from single crystal compounds including PuIn_3, PuSb2 and PuSn_3, reveals systematics in the bonding and hybridization of the 5f electrons with the conduction states. Photoemission results for several photon energies allow a separation in the valence band spectra between hybridized and localized 5f states. The variation in spectral intensity as a function of temperature between 10 and 300 K for peaks near the Fermi level indicates narrow band as opposed to many-body resonance characteristics. Exposure of clean surfaces to molecular hydrogen and oxygen is used to separate surface and bulk contributions to the electronic properties. In the layered compound PuSb2 a peak at the Fermi level <= 70 meV wide exhibits predominant 5f content while delta phase Pu shows a peak <= 100 meV wide with a strong 6d admixture. A comparison between photoemission and constrained generalized gradient approximation calculations is presented as this computational approach has been extended to include compounds of Pu as well as elemental phases. note
- Publication:
-
APS March Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- March 2002
- Bibcode:
- 2002APS..MAR.S4001J