Refractive index of vanadium determined by resonant diffraction of soft x-rays

TL;DR

This study measures the dispersive part of vanadium's refractive index using resonant diffraction of soft X-rays, revealing that 1-{ extdelta} exceeds unity at the L2,3 resonances, with implications for optical properties.

Contribution

It introduces a method to directly determine the dispersive refractive index of vanadium at absorption resonances using synchrotron radiation diffraction.

Findings

1-{ extdelta} exceeds unity at vanadium's L2,3 resonances

Absorption influences the dispersion correction

Optical consequences of the dispersion are discussed

Abstract

The dispersive part of the refractive index of vanadium is determined by measuring the angular displacement of the first order diffraction peak of a V/Fe superlattice. The measurements were made using elliptically polarized synchrotron radiation which was scanned through the V L2,3 absorption edges for different incident scattering angles. The x-ray scattering technique provides access to direct determination of the dispersive part of the refractive index through an absorption resonance. The influence of absorption at the resonances is shown by comparing the absorption correction to the dispersion correction. The results demonstrate that 1-{\delta} is larger than unity at the L2,3 resonances of vanadium and the optical consequences are discussed.