Auger effect in high-resolution Ce (formula presented) resonant photoemission

The bulk-sensitive Ce (formula presented) spectral weights of various Ce compounds including (formula presented) (formula presented) and (formula presented) were obtained with the resonant photoemission technique at the Ce (formula presented) edge. We found that the line shapes change significantly with the small change of the incident photon energy. Detailed analysis showed that this phenomenon results primarily from the Auger transition between different multiplet states of the Ce (formula presented) (bar denotes a hole) electronic configuration in the intermediate state of the resonant process. This tells us that extra care should be taken for the choice of the resonant photon energy when extracting Ce (formula presented) spectral weights from the Ce (formula presented) resonant photoemission spectra. The absorption energy corresponding to the lowest multiplet structure of the Ce (formula presented) configuration seems to be the logical choice to obtain genuine Ce (formula presented) spectral weight from the Ce (formula presented) resonant photoemission data.