Electronic Structure of Mott Insulators Studied by Inelastic X-ray Scattering

The electronic structure of Mott insulators continues to be a major unsolved problem in physics despite more than 50 years of research. Well-developed momentum-resolved spectroscopies such as photoemission or neutron scattering cannot probe the full Mott gap. High-resolution resonant inelastic x-ray scattering revealed dispersive charge excitations across the Mott gap in a high–critical temperature parent cuprate (Ca2CuO2Cl2), shedding light on the anisotropy of the Mott gap. These charge excitations across the Mott gap can be described within the framework of the Hubbard model.