Oxides and their heterostructures studied with X-ray absorption spectroscopy and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering in the “Soft” energy range

Soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) have become essential experimental tools for the investigations the complex physics of transition metal oxide (TMO) heterostructures. XAS has been long used to determine the valence, the orbital and magnetic properties of transition metals. More recently, linear and circular dichroism in XAS have been widely applied to determine the crystal field splitting, the atomic orbital and spin moments, and the magnetic order of 3d-states, in bulk sample, in thin films and at atomically-sharp interfaces. Although less common, RIXS is also gaining popularity for its capability of accessing local and collective excitations at a time; the recent technical advances have been established RIXS as an important method for the determination of the electronic and magnetic properties of TMOs. This chapter is a brief review of the salient XAS and RIXS results on TMO and TMO heterostructures published in the last 15 years.