Abstract
The electronic structure of strongly correlated electronic systems is an important issue in condensed matter physics, since the discovery of various interesting phenomena arising from strong correlations, such as superconductivity, colossal magnetoresistance, ...etc. Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) in the soft X-ray range is a powerful probe to investigate electronic excitations in solids. By measuring the excitation energies and the dependence of momentum transfer, the electronic structure can be further revealed. In this thesis, we performed measurements of resonant inelastic soft X-ray scattering on NiO and CoO, by using a newly designed beamline based on an energy compensation principle. Two optically identical, actively bendable gratings were used as the monochromator and spectrometer. The RIXS spectra at L-edge with a combined energy resolution at 240 meV were obtained. We assigned different energy-loss features of electronic excitations from RIXS spectra to the dd excitations and charge-transfer excitations. The dd excitations are interpreted by the crystal field theory, and the crystal field strength (10Dq) is obtained. The RIXS spectra obtained with different incident photon energies are consistent well with the simulations by the single impurity Anderson model.